The First Betrayal
by Agapanto Blu
Summary: Luka with a mysterious past; Luka, who figths; Luka with his bad and good memories, which Yuki doesn't recognize anymore. How did it happen that the most loved by the Demon King and already marked with the sinners' sign, decided to betray his own allies for the sake of his enemies' source of life, a human female he would have had to kill? Luka's past and Yuki's first life with him.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter I

**INFERNUS**

"Only I know your pain…"

When the mother's screams died away, and the newborns', weaker and babyish ones, arose in the air, nobody rejoiced.

That night, there were two motives, which make those present, including the new mom, keep silent, and both were reflected in the two crosses, carved on the woman's arm, that stood out in the Infernus red moon light. Those, who, for one reason or another, had kept a bit of compassion in the bottom of the heart, knew perfectly well that for the trio in the narrow bed it would have been better to die than to survive the labour and birth. The other ones, who, being good and proper demons, didn't feel anything but a cruel satisfaction at the idea of two new members of the cursed clan and had hoped to get one such spawn for themselves, were now intimidated and froze in awe of a figure, who had appeared in the middle of the room.

Black mid-back-length hair and a finely chiseled face, so beautiful it tore at the soul of anybody, who happened to look at it... The man got a couple of steps closer, arriving at the foot of the bed, which had hosted the labour.

The woman trebmled and, instinctively, tightened her grip around the twins, two little plump and rosy baby boys, who had fallen asleep in her arms, unawares; but she couldn't turn her eyes away from the ruby ones of her king.

"I beg you…", she found herself whispering, without knowing, where she had found the courage to plead with the hell king, "I beg you, they have just been born…"

"Oh, Lilith," Lucifer shook his head with a cruel smile on his lips, "they'll grow up, you know?"

Lilith knew she would get such an answer. You couldn't expect mercy from that being; even less hope there were for a woman like her, so beautiful with her incredibly long black hair and wonderful eyes, one grey and one amethyst, - so beautiful, but a slave, coming from the cursed family. And even so, for a moment she had tried to hope. Not for herself; Lilith knew she had condemned her own life as soon as she discovered she had conceived children of the man, who wasn't her master; but for her babies she had dared to beg, and she would dare to do it again.

"Please," she murmured, her voice a bit louder than before, "don't do this to them…"

She couldn't finish. Lucifer made a quick movement with his right hand, brought vertically near his face, and Lilith felt her throat tighten in an invisible iron grip, which choked her voice out and took away her air. With a spasm, she held the twins even closer.

The one leaning against her left shoulder started crying with the strong pressure, the other one became red with fear or pain, but didn't shed a tear nor uttered a sound.

Lucifer smiled even more. He moved to the side of the bed and reached out to the woman, who was growing paler by the moment, struggling for breath.

The left baby cried even louder, when he felt that, apart from his mother going cold, his brother, his last source of heat, had been taken from him, too.

Ignoring the weaker one's crying, Lucifer straightened with the right twin in his hands, who still stubbornly refused to cry. The hell king smiled, then he turned his back to the pleading eyes of exhausted Lilith and took a step to the exit.

"That one", he only said at the door, pointing with a nod at the remaining twin, "you can keep."

And then Lucifer went outside. He had taken a couple of srides before he felt his spell melting, useless, and Lilith's life dissipating as dust in the wind.

In that moment, Luze's bawls that had been getting more and more desperate, were echoed with Luka's first cry.

_[Sound the bugle now. Play it just for me._

_As the seasons change, remember how I used to be.]_

Luka was eight and really hungry, when he met Lucifer for what he thought was the first time.

Since the demon king killed his parents and took him away, Lucifer had never showed up at the young Crosszeria's for years. The one reason was that Luka had been too young to be useful. What did he have to do with a two, three, four-year-old child, who cried all the time and couldn't do anything worthy? In fact, waiting for the slaves to grow up was the most hated part. But as for Luka…

Lucifer savoured every moment - from the instant, when the doors of his room were opened and the young Cadenza, a middle-level Opast, destined for fame, dragged the child inside, and till the moment, when the young demon slipped out, leaving the Crosszeria boy on his knees, too weak to resist any attack.

In his childish way, Luka was gorgeous. Hip-length soft pitch black hair and eyes of frosty silver, like mercury frozen into ice. His translucent skin was stretched tightly over his skinny body, leaving all his bones in plain sight, and his light complexion made the bruises stood out like stars in a negative form of the sky.

Despite his condition, Luka braced up to straighten his arms enough to raise his head and to look at his master, who called to him, but the child didn't shiver as his mom did, when his eyes met the red ones of the lord of the demons. Luka had already killed two A-level demons to earn that little amount of food, which was granted him to ensure the boy's survival, and that achievement had intrigued the demon king very much. The little one gritted his teeth, and steel flashed in his eye, making his glare too hostile and angry for a child.

No, Luka never seemed a child; maybe because he had never been one. He was a miniature adult, and he was too gorgeous for Lucifer to wait even one more day.

Without a word, the hell king stretched out his hand and grabbed Luka by his hair, than he pulled the boy to him. 

_[Now I can't go on, I can't even start._  
><em>I've got nothing left, just an empty heart.]<em>

That night, for the second time in his life, Luka cried out.

_[I'm a soldier, wounded so I must give up the fight._  
><em>There's nothing more to me: lead me away...<em>  
><em>or leave me lying here.]<em>

"Hurry!"

Luka practically didn't mind the kick that caught him in the ribs, while he was trying to get up. Kneeling on the floor, he had just cleaned all his master's lodgings, and now his body ached with the effort and the bruises Cadenza, as if playing, gave him from time to time, like right at that moment, while he supervised the young slave. Silently, Luka got up and rapidly gathered up everything he had used for cleaning, so as to not make his master angry, and headed for the door.

He endured, without a word, all the violent pushes, the demon landed on his back on the way to his tiny cell, which, for Luka, was the best thing in his miserable life because being there meant he wasn't forced to spend another night in his lustful master's wonderful chamber. The chamber, which, for Luka, was the worst of the cages.

The boy almost stumbled, when Cadenza shoved him over the doorstep, but he managed to keep his balance and just stood there, motionless, not daring to move an inch until the echo of the closed padlocks on the wooden door vanished in the air and the low sound of his tormentor's steps became inaudible. Than he risked taking a deeper breath and went up to a thin litter, made of dry straw, but cold with dampness, which was his bed. He just wanted to lie down for a moment and recover his strength – just so that he could last through the hours till the dawn and then bear the rest of the day, which, with the sleep it would bring, would provide him with a bit of courage to get up at the next sunset.

Luka lowered his eyelids and in the black that surrounded him he curled up on himself, wrapping his arms around his skinny body to warm it a little.

He had accepted his destiny. He understood it, and he agreed with it, in part. He knew his clan deserved what he was now suffering. But sometimes it was so hard...

In his dark corner, ignoring bites some mice gave to his bare feet, testing, if he was still alive and if they could eat him, Luka felt again the harsh words of demons torture him.

"You Crosszeria, tsk! You're lousy traitors, you make one sick, just looking at your faces!" "It's your fault, only yours! If your damn ancestor hadn't sold us, now we wouldn't be pets for humans!" "Our names! Our TRUE names! Anyone, who knows them, can force us to obey their orders! The bastard sold us!" "Kill all of you? And what for? To save you from the destiny you've condemned us to?" "No, it would have been too easy. You doomed our ancestors to slavery, and this will be your punishment: you'll have no peace even in your own home, marked by two 'X' carved into your left arm, you'll be cursed forever. Culprits, you'll be slaves for the brothers you have betrayed!"

Luka drifted between sleep and consciousness, while Lucifer's silken and cruel voice, announcing his sentence, rumbled in his brain.

For a Duras, a hell demon, their true name was sacred, not even their relatives could know it because, when pronounced, it forced the owner to obey. Luka knew why all the underworld beings, from the weaker A-level demons to the stronger Opast Generals, gang up on his clan, and a part of him shared their anger against that forbear, whose name he didn't even know. But at the age of eleven he still believed that some justice could exist even in Infernus and that someone, sooner or later, would understand that he, Luka, after all that millennia, certainly couldn't be blamed for what his ancestor had once done.

He opened the shutter, when he felt Cadenza approaching, and jumped to his feet instinctively just before the Opast opened the wooden door.

Cadenza was tall, an adult for a couple of centuries already; he had long red hair and narrow eyes, full of cruelty; his strongly muscled body and a sharp, stout face were a perfect match. His looks couldn't be compared with Luka's elegant and delicate handsomeness, but still Cadenza was quite attractive, just like all the higher demons were, a trap for humans.

Luka realized he had grown in height to reach Cadenza's chest, although his body was much leaner and malnourished. He looked into Cadenza's eyes and knew, why the man had come.

A well-hidden part of him trembled, but Luka didn't let the world in on this; he stood, strong and quiet, waiting for the Duras to confirm his suspicions.

"Follow me," the redhead ordered derisively, eyeing the boy from head to toe, as if he also was incredulous about the words he was going to say, "you start training."

_[Sound the bugle now. Tell them I don't care._  
><em>There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere. <em>  
><em>Without a light I fear that I will stumbled in the dark,<em>  
><em>lay right down, decide not to go on.]<em>

Luka slowly traced the silver claw on his right ear with his thumb and index finger. It would be enough for him to appeal to just a tiny bit of his powers to make it change into his black sword, long and sharp, with a hilt, carved in a toothed way, as if to make it cutting, too, and a big bloody-red gem in the intersection between the hilt and the blade.

And...

And Lucifer would need even a smaller droplet of his powers to break Luka's sword into pieces and compel his obedience by force. Luka knew it, but he couldn't help imagining grasping his sword to try to defend himself from his master, not just to defend the worm from others.

Suppressing a sigh, he slowly opened the door, which lead to Lucifer's rooms, and silently came in and then closed it. He passed the little anteroom and entered the bedroom wordlessly.

An invisible band around his chest tightened brutally, cutting off his breath and squeezing the air out of his lungs, when he saw Lucifer, his back to Luka, staring at the red Infernus moon behind the polished glass of the window. If the demon lord was waiting for him, with nothing to distract his attention, then for Luka that would be not a painless night.

"Master?" he asked, slowly kneeling to the ground.

Lucifer turned without a word and just stood there, admiring his darling's submission for a moment.

There was his beloved servant, with magical powers, superior to the ones of everybody else, maybe even his own. Cold-hearted and ruthless; his eyes were like steel blades, and his hair was the night itself. His body was still thin, for he was forced to go hungry, but, although slim and slender, he had grown up and matured a bit, thanks to the trainings, duels and battles. His rice-paper skin showed not only bones, but also veins and tendons, stretched over lean yet powerful muscles. It was obvious he was a warrior, scary and handsome. And he was his.

Lucifer approached his Zess and put his hand into his hair. For a few moments he enjoyed the sensation of its silky softness, before he tightened his grip and forced the youth on his feet. Luka let out no moan, not a sound at all, but, when standing up, he complied with his master's hand movement and looked up at his face.

He was sixteen, and his body was still a bit childish, but it seemed to manifest to the world how handsome and masculine this adolescent was going to be in a couple of years. It had to be said that to Lucifer, who appreciated boyish beauty and charm, at that moment Luka appeared to be the most gorgeous being ever created. Unable to restrain himself, the demon king, not loosening his grip on his Zess' hair, imposed a violent and possessive kiss to the young Duras' lips, which pushed his mouth open and polluted it with wickedness.

Luka's stomach revolted, pleading with him to run away from that agony, which made him feel defiled in an irreparable way, but his head reminded him that, by now, nothing could make him whole again and that flinching was forbidden and horribly punished. So he stood still, striving for keeping calm and silent, and let his master took pleasure in his mouth and his suffering.

When Lucifer broke the kiss, he was even more sure about his decision.

"I want to make you a present, Luka… Are you happy?" he whispered into his ear, so that his lips just touched the youth's earlobe at each word.

Luka had to engage all his restraint not to shudder. He continued staring off into space in front of him, wordlessly, waiting to discover what was going to happen to him.

Lucifer snapped his free hand fingers, and Luka's clothes disappeared. The frosty air started to bite at his skin, but he didn't really notice it, worried at this turn of events. He had almost hoped to avoid it, for that night, but, indeed, he would have had to know better than this here, in Infernus.

Lucifer pulled young Zess closer by his hair and pushed him to the bed, causing the youth to fall prone on the enormous mattress; then the demon king let the tester ropes come to life and wrap around Luka's finely muscled arms to tie them together behind his back.

Luka didn't even try to move, he lay still and waited for the inevitable, but the minutes passed, and no hot and violent body, so heavy because it was too much bigger than his, came to crush him.

"Luka…" Lucifer whispered, but the tone he used made the youth's skin creep.

He didn't dare to move his whole body, but he turned his head to look at his master over his shoulder.

Lucifer had taken off his gloves and had brought his index finger to his mouth. After a second, he removed it, and Luka could see a small cut on the hell king's fingertip, from which a drop of dense and dark red blood oozed out.

His stomach rebelled even more.

"My cute Luka…", Lucifer soughed, his voice reduced to a scary gasp his slave knew all too well.

Luka gritted his teeth, stiffened his jaw and maintained his stoic expression, but he didn't averted his eyes from Lucifer, who got near with his bloody finger stretched out toward the youth. A part of Luka wanted to scream with fear, but his other, stronger part wanted just to let Lucifer do whatever he was going to do – so that everything could be finished as soon as possible. And that was the very part, which had allowed him to survive till that day, the one, which knew, when it was time to fight and when to bow his head.

Lucifer saw Luka's dull expression and smiled.

"We'll seal this special contract", he revealed, kneeling on the mattress to have Duras' legs locked under his, "with my blood."

Luka felt his heart slowing down a little, while he used all the strength he had learned to master not to really think about what that phrase meant. Silent, he observed his lord's satisfied expression, while Lucifer sneered, seeing him so weak at his disposal.

"How about I dye your Brand Zess?" the king went on, and at same time he tightened his healthy hand's grip on the boy's left arm, at the elbow, and clamped it, while bringing his bloody finger closer to the two 'X', carved into his flesh. Luka continued staring at his face with a sad expression, as if he didn't mind, and that made the king's cruel smile even bigger. He adored the cold defiance that slave offered and the quiet way, in which he tried to resist the wounds that were impressed into his body and into his mind; he adored it to the point of foolishness. "Don't worry", he whispered again, with fake kindness, leaning forward to get closer and better see his intended work, "you should be able to withstand the pain."

For a moment Luka felt the finger touch the top of one of the marks on his arm, but then some fire blazed up and began to consume his flesh, where the Lucifer's blood came in contact with the scar and started to reopen it by force, thrusting into the new cuts and infecting them.

"Always remember…"

Luka hardly heard Lucifer's voice through the curtain of excruciating pain, so strong and intense that it was burning away the rest of the world and made him believe his whole body was aflame. The youth set his jaw, trying hard to hold back the scream that was tearing at his throat, but he felt his face contracting into a grimace of pure suffering against his will. All his muscles stretched and stiffened, distraught by a wound his body didn't see coming and couldn't prevent or heal in any way. Instinctively, he tried to wriggle his arms free, but they were tied securely, and the demon lord was now pressing on them with his whole weight in order to block him under his body. With Lucifer's frame upon him, Luka felt a hardness against his hip, which warned him that breach wouldn't be the only one of that night.

"You're mine", Lucifer murmured in his ear, his voice silken and smooth, which was enough to make Luka grit his teeth. Luka, who, staring off into empty space, was doing his damndest to maintain control over his body, which was trying to writhe. "Every strand of hair, every drop of blood."

The fire, devouring his flesh, doubled its heat, when Lucifer finished, with his last word, to trace the second 'X' with his finger, and at that point it was too much for Luka.

He closed his eyes and screamed in pain.

_[Then from some high, somewhere in the distance,_  
><em>there's a voice that calls: "Remember who you are.<em>  
><em>If you loose yourself, your courage soon will follow,<em>  
><em>so be strong tonight. Remember who you are."]<em>

He slightly tightened the grip of his hands on his forearms. Knees to chest, crossed arms supported by them, he sat there, with his gaze lost in the space – in the sky that was too high to be reached.

There was a storm, a big one, not so far from the dead tree, on which branch the young Duras had spent hours and hours before, taking advantage from the freedom from his master's orders. That night, the expanse over his head was covered with thick and dense clouds, grey and narrow like some big mice, intending to fight between themselves; the rain washed out the horizon line, but the lightnings illuminated the gloomy and apathetic face of the youth, all curled up into his Opast uniform that was too big for him.

Luka lowered his gaze a bit, moving his eyes only, and looked at himself. The white skin of his wrists, visible at the border of the sleeve, showed, without any chance of misunderstanding, the big bruises, which seemed to wrap as snakes around his joints and went on, upwards, to hide from view, in a perfect mould of the strings, which had crushed his arms in the bedroom. He didn't dare to think, what the rest of his body should look like: his back, against which Lucifer had pressed his knees to keep him still; his chest the king had kicked; his legs the demon lord had sprawled to put them into the position he preferred. Luka knew quite well that the one reason, why his face didn't show any trace of violence, was that the king loved his graceful beauty. For the umpteenth time, Luka wished he had the courage to turn his blade against his own face, to disfigure himself so irreparably and to look so revolting as to make even his master run away from him; but his most apathetic part always stopped him with the same objections: firstly, his face was the one thing, which gave him some advantage on the other Duras, and the only reason Lucifer had to keep him close, despite the rebellion risk, and not to eliminate the problem at its root, taking into account the enormous and ever increasing magical power he was showing more and more; secondly, his master's rage would be beyond imagination, if his favourite toy got broken, and his wrath was something nobody with a brain would ever like to face. And Luka had been beaten enough to not want to endure another bashing and other tortures.

Not allowing himself to sigh, he curled up a little more tightly and returned his eyes to the lightnings, which shattered the earth far away from him.

But he had already seen.

He was weak . There was no way to deny it, now. His body was too frail; the muscles were worthless, if there was no strength to use them, and his powers were out of control. Everything in him said 'victim' to any demon he came across with.

A faster series of thunderbolt hit the ground. At first, they left just a little spurt of fire, like a candle, but soon the flames engulfed the whole zone and expanded to the nearer fields. And the lightnings continued to fall.

Why woildn't they strike nearer? Why wouldn't they hit that tree and burn it, letting him die with it?

"War, Zess. It's the only thing, which exists in Infernus. The natural law of 'kill or be killed' has reached its heyday here. It isn't a non-written rule, it's our simple doctrine, the only creed we rely on. So you'd better learn quickly to kill bigger and worse beings than you or, I assure you, you won't live long."

Luka shivered, hearing again the words of the General he was entrusted to so that he could learn how to fight. That lesson came in the middle of a beating, when he didn't yet have the strength to break free from a much stronger adversary. He was twelve, then, but he remembered these words as if it had happened the day before. Just like he remembered the day he decided to put them to practice and his blade – to his beloved teacher's forehead. But hey, that one really happened the day before.

What would happen now – he couldn't say. He had reached the high-class Opast status long before, and the killing of a General, added to the Lucifer's mark, screamed in his ears that from now on he would be someone legendary in the others' eyes, a less-than-a-century old Opast killer, the king's favourite. He didn't know, whether Lucifer gave him his mark in that moment just by chance, or if the demon lord made it expressly to tie him to killing and to make him new and special, in everyone's perception. But from now on, to kill him would be the wish of anyone, who saw him, for fear or for envy. He didn't believe his master wanted to get rid of him, or he would have already done so; but he leaned toward the idea that, as sadistic as the king was, he just had decided to see how long he would survive and how tough he would be in a fight. It was what Lucifer always wanted: to watch him flounder and writhe and then find some strength somewhere to perk up.

But Luka was tired of perking up, healing and starting again. He was tired of looking at himself and feeling the impulse to destroy what he saw – to save the others the trouble.

He raised his eyes to the thunderbolts, still falling on the hill, which was almost all afire.

There would never be an end to his suffering, if he didn't become the one to put it. The demons wouldn't have mercy on him, and he would have none on them.

With an effort, but without betraying any emotion with his face, he rose and stood up on the branch. His left arm still throbbed because of his master's rite, and he knew his 'X', hidden to the world thanks to the cloth, glowed on his skin in dark and rich scarlet, which made them unique. A possessive mark and a sign of independence, a target and a scarecrow at the same time, he couldn't break free, and so he would get free of anyone, who would try to make him pay for it.

He had already given away too much, and he had no intention to spend another drop of blood at anyone's hand. Anyone's, who wasn't the one, from whom, he knew, he would never be able to run away and against whom he would never be able to prevail – his master, sadly, the only one he really wished to get rid of.

_[You're a soldier now, fighting in a battle_  
><em>to be free once more.<em>  
><em>That's worth fighting for.]<em>

* * *

><p>I do not own the song. It is the Lyrics of Bryan Adam's "Sound the bugle", from "Spirit" soundtrack.<p>

* * *

><p>Hi!<p>

Ehm, I'm Agap... *embarrassed* Ok, this is my first story on this site and in a foreign (for me) language, so... be mercifull, please! XD

If you find out any mistake (and you'll probably do), please let me know :)

Speaking of the story, I don't know when I'll publish the next chapter. It's quite ready in Italian, but I have to translate it yet...

Let me know if the story enjoys!

Read you soon!,

Agap


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II  
><strong>THE LIGHT OF GOD<strong> 

_"…your uncertainty…"_

Luka didn't pay attention to the whispers, which were not, in fact, even whispers, of those, who wished him the worst fate possible. He just drew his sword and eliminated the current blighter. Simple, clean and in perfect harmony with what his life had been like for those centuries. The ones, who provoked him, would not live long, either: if those Duras were not smart enough to understand that challenging Bloody Cross was not a game they could play well, then they didn't deserve to live.

It was probably the reason why the Duras, who were not totally brainless, instead of following their nature and defying anyone, who looked down on them, quickly stepped aside, when Luka walked Infernus streets and his master's castle hollways, despite the fact that they all were aware of what he was. No one dared to use rude words, but Luka knew what they implied under the definition 'the demon king's beloved one'.

He opened the door and got in, sparing no glance to the bed. He was afraid to find it unmade and waiting just as much as he feared to see it made: it was impossible to predict, when his master called him in for a mission and when it was just to play around with his body. Therefore, it was better to ignore the matter and the rest of the world altogether and remain unaware till the end - then he could hope for something different from the umpteenth brutal defilement.

When he glimpsed Lucifer's figure, backlit in front of the window, he knelt and kept his gaze fixed on the floor, silent. He didn't have to wait long before his master's hand slipped into his hair and then under his chin. The king's fingers tightened on his cheeks and made him raise his head by force. Luka obeyed, but kept staring straight ahead, his look vacuous and unfocused.

"Luka, my beautiful Luka…" Lucifer breathed into his ear, sighing almost ruefully, "I wish I didn't have to send you away right now… The mere idea of letting you get out of here without enjoying you…It would break my heart, if only I had one."

Luka kept silence.

Crosszeria meant even that, basically. What Master wished was what he would do. You couldn't choose, it was the natural order of things.

Lucifer brought his head closer to his slave's one and nestled his face into the young man's hair, inhaling deeply, then he backed away and sighed.

Luka bowed his head again, glaring at the floor, while his master returned to the window.

"Tell me, Luka," Lucifer went on, his voice suddenly so cold that it made the Duras worry, "how is your pet doing?" Luka felt a thrill of something flutter inside, but the feeling disappeared before he could even identify it. "I told you to kill him, together with his brother," Lucifer continued, "I told you they had annoyed me and humiliated a lot of my men, defeating them. Have you disobeyed me, Luka?"

The Duras felt a shiver twitch in his back muscles at that question. He understood Lucifer knew the answer quite well.

"Master…" he tried, but his appeal was brusquely interrupted.

"Answer me, Luka."

His master's voice was getting sharper, and he reined himself in to obey.

"Yes, master", he admitted, his voice clear despite the uncertainty in his chest, but his gaze still on the floor.

Luka was well aware that he wouldn't be able to lie; he knew it at the moment, when he made his decision, so he was ready for the consequences of his gesture.

In his mind, he saw an image of that small dragon, more like a black furball than a monster, and Luka realized something in his chest relaxed at the mere idea of that puppy.

"Luka, Luka, Luka…" Lucifer crooned in disappointment, "What should I do with you, now? I certainly can't let that pass…"

Luka tried not to swallow hard and stood still, waiting.

The demon king enjoyed his servant's silent resignation, so he kept him waiting a bit longer before turning to look at him again.

The passing years had made Luka even more handsome, drop-dead gorgeous. Pitch black hair, now cut short, just reaching his shoulders, and silvery eyes; vampire teeth and a translucent skin; a supernatural beauty and huge power. Despite his four centuries of life, he looked nineteen years old, by human standards, and full of strength, lethality and violence.

"How about I let you keep your little friend?" the king proposed, smiling.

Luka hesitated. Every time Lucifer said 'How about…' he really meant 'I'll do this, and you'll obey me', but the young Duras, however, feared the conditions that false permission would cost him.

"Master?" he just asked. For a moment, a part of him speculated, if he was still able to say anything else except that single word and 'yes'.

Lucifer got near, and all Luka could see were his feet; then the demon lord looked him over, thinking about how much satisfaction that lad would bring him.

"Do you know what Zweilts are, Luka?"

_[A warning to the people,_  
><em>the good and the evil.<em>  
><em>This is war.<em>  
><em>To the soldier, the civilian,<em>  
><em>the martyr, the victim.<em>  
><em>This is war.]<em>

Luka gritted his teeth and bore it until he got to his cell, but when he finally was inside, he leaned forward, arms crossed on his stomach, and moaned in pain. His shoulders and back were in agony from the lashes he had received and the ferocity, with which his flesh had been cut through and ripped open; his wrists ached from the shackles, in which they had been imprisoned, and the rest of his body cried from the humiliation. Lucifer said that letting him go without enjoying him would have broken his heart, and in the end, the demon lord decided it wasn't worth risking such a distress.

He took a deep breath, righted himself up a bit, strove to push back inside all the emotions he felt and, after he had assumed, again, his usual frosty expression, he took another step forward. As his foot crossed the border of the seal circle he imposed in a fruitless attempt to hide from his master the presence of a magic creature in the castle, the air shimmered, and a small figure took form.

Luka stood glaring at the black-as-night furball, who stayed air-borne just thanks to the thrust of his little wings. He had a little muzzle with sparkling yellow eyes, a red stone in the centre of his forehead and a long slightly hairy tail.

As the creature realized, who entered his shelter, the little dragon threw himself forward with all the might his wings could manage and crashed against the Duras' chest, clawing his uniform to stick in position; then he started rubbing his muzzle against the demon, making strange little noises, much similar to purring.

Luka was surprised to feel the muscles in his cheeks tense, trying to turn the corners of his mouth upwards, but he abolished that impetus. However, he wasn't able to keep himself from raising his hands and wrapping them around that little being, one under him to support his weight and one above to fondle him.

Sodom increased his purring and started to move in the young man's hands, leaving sporadic licks against his fingers, while enjoying his cuddling.

Luka remembered his real form very well - the enormous black-and-purple dragon, named Salamander, able to spit flames so big that he burned to ashes a whole group of Duras; but he also remembered that look in his eyes.

When Lucifer sent him with a team to eliminate the brother dragons Sodom and Gomorrah, Luka thought to deal with this task quickly. Gomorrah, in fact, proved most predictable, with his craving for attack and kill, but Sodom surprised him. When he found them, Gomorrah had already made an assault on his brother and wounded him severely, and Sodom had probably just realized he was going to die by the hand of his own twin. Luka would never be able to forget the sadness that betrayal had left in the big dragon's eyes. Sodom was in such despair that he just lay there, motionless and apathetic, while they killed Gomorrah, and did not even tried to move a muscle, when Luka approached to finish him off. Sodom didn't resist and just waited, listless and silent, for the Duras to make up his mind. Luka knew he should have killed him. However, when their eyes met, he read there absolute desperation and the very question he had already asked himself so many times: why? And Luka lowered his sword for the first time in his whole life because he faced a well-known reflection, obviously distorted and different, but similar enough to his own to make him feel sick. How could he kill the dragon, aware that it would be practically the same as killing himself? The moment he hesitated, Sodom had to have seen something in him, and some new emotion replaced the suffering in his eyes. At first, Luka recognized curiosity, but then it turned into something else. Maybe, at the beginning, it was comprehension, but soon, who knows how and why, it transformed into faith. Sodom was equipped with an experience of centuries of life, but for his race, he was just like a seven or eight year old child. He saw Luka, decided he were kind, and just like that, from one moment to another, Luka heard a childish voice in his head, praying him to accept Sodom as a familiar. He didn't even know what a familiar was.

Nevertheless, he reached out, touched Sodom on his forehead, and the beast transformed into a sharp-toothed yellow-eyed furball. Luka hid him under his uniform jacket and returned to Infernus, briefly puzzling over what idiot part of him had decided to commit suicide for the sake of a dragon.

Now, he began to realize that part of him had been right and Sodom, in just a few days, had returned the favour, giving him something he had thought he would never be able to have: trust, respect and affection.

Luka went to sit down on his straw litter, his back against the wall and legs bent in front of chest, but he kept Sodom in his hands so that he was snuggled between his torso and his knees. He desperately wanted to protect the creature, and he didn't know why - he had never had such a wish regarding anyone else before; but for once, Luka didn't ask any questions and just cuddled Sodom because the mission Lucifer had assigned him was practically a suicide.

Sodom must have sensed his owner's nervousness because he stopped licking his palm and pushed against his fingers until he was able to pass his head between the thumb and the index finger of the hand on his back. Then he stared up at his new friend curiously and inclined his head to one side.

_Master?_

Luka jerked. Sodom's voice in his head had taken him aback, but not as much as the title he addressed him with.

_I'm not your master, Sodom._, he thought, looking at the little being. He was afraid of using his own voice, afraid of hearing it and discovering he couldn't say anything except 'yes, master'.

_Of course, the Master is Sodom's Master._, retorted the childish voice in his mind, while the pet stood upright and held the fingers of the hand, which had previously covered him, between his forepaws. Carefully, he started to nibble at them. _Sodom loves his Master._

Luka shook his head a bit, tenderly, and a corner of his mouth moved up for a moment.

_I don't want to hurt you._

_And for that Sodom loves his Master._

As if peeved by the confusion that discourse installed in him, Sodom let himself fall down on the Duras' left palm and caught the tip of his right index finger between his sharp little teeth.

_I have to go away for some time, Sodom._

The abrupt news startled the dragon so much that he bit his friend too hard. Luka uttered a curse, while he was bringing his bloody finger to his lips. Mentally, Sodom sent him all his emotions – a mixture of sorrow, regret and confusion.

Luka sighted.

_I had to go and fight, and I don't know, when I come back._, he tried to explain.

Sodom nodded wisely.

_The Master fights well. The Master will soon come back to Sodom._

Luka shook his head, heartened, in spite of all, by the puppy's blind trust.

_There will be strong enemies, Sodom. I'm not sure I'll come back… soon._ The expression on the animal's face turned so upset upon hearing his words that Luka felt forced to add that last part. hoping to reassure the creature a bit.

The little familiar seemed to think for a while, then he flied up to land on Luka's shoulder.

_Sodom is going with his Master._

_No, Sodom, you…_

_Sodom is going with his Master._

_Sodom!_

_Sodom is going with his Master._

Luka set his teeth to suppress his rage. That obstinate puppy would get himself killed!

He knew Zweilts and knew how strong they were. Of course, he was stronger, both as a fighter and as a magic user, but they acted in pairs, and there were more than one such duo. And Lucifer sent him out alone. His hopes to make it back were rather weak, if for no other reason than because his enemies benefited from the protection of a special member of their family, who was able to heal all their wounds. While Luka would need several days to recover from a conflict, they would be able to return immediately to hunting him down. It was too simple for Luka to imagine them haunt him, drive him out, too exhausted to react fast enough, and finish him off, without even granting him the dignity of dying with his sword in his hand. They would eliminate Sodom without thinking twice, and he had no intention to let that happen.

_You'll stay here._, he ordered, putting into these four words all the relentlessness he was capable of.

Sodom stared at him silently for some moments, then…

_Sodom is going with his Master._

_[It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie,_  
><em>the moment to live and the moment to die,<em>  
><em>the moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight...<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left,<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death,<em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world from the last to the first.<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left,<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death,<em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world, it's a brave new world...]<em> 

Luka mentally swore a hundred of oaths, when the Eye of God Zweilt appeared in front of him. He had hoped to get rid of the Voice of God first, who was, doubtlessly, more dangerous to him, but it seemed that slamming a Zweilt against a rock was not enough to knock him out for more than a bit.

_Reminder to myself: eliminate them, period._

Then he let the Eye's attack slip near his hip, stepping aside at the last second, and passed his sword between the Zweilt's legs, who, injured, fell on his comrade that had just arrived behind Luka.

The Duras maintained his neutral and cold expression, while he watched the blood colour his brown-haired adversary's trouser leg. As he had imagined, the other one was too stupid to notice the trap and immediately got worried about his companion, calling to him in such a desperate way that Luka wasn't sure he had caught the name. Maybe Shusi? Or Shuse? The Duras shrugged: it was irrelevant; so he pointed his sword to the duo and evoked a magic attack strong enough to kill them both.

He was ready to strike at his enemies, when something distracted him, breaking his expression of indifference and replacing it with one of dismay. As Sodom's voice rang in his mind, Luka's eyes widened.

_MASTER! HELP, MASTER!_

The Zweilts all but forgotten, Luka switched to a new target, which was much more important for him than his master's mission.

He hissed, more towards the still-unknown attackers of Sodom than towards the two Zweilts, who were now staring at him with anger and confusion, then he turned and darted away in the direction, where he felt Sodom was.

Shusei frowned.

"What is he doing?"

He tried to get up, but his leg was badly wounded in a crash with the General Opast's really sharp blade, so it didn't support his weight, and he fell down again.

Hotsuma hastily righted him and helped his friend up, and then he strained his eyes, striving to see, where to the demon had run.

"I guess it would be too optimistic of me to hope he has got scared of us, uh?" he said, sarcastically.

Shusei nodded, but not even he understood, what could have persuaded the demon to give up killing two Zweilts. Hotsuma wouldn't ever admit it, but he knew that time they had come really close to be killed.

"Let's call Takashiro", he told his comrade, keeping in mind the image of two crimson 'X'. "We have a new enemy, and he is truly dangerous."

_[A warning to the prophet,_  
><em>to the liar, to the honest.<em>  
><em>This is war.<em>  
><em>To the leader, to the pariah, <em>  
><em>the victim, the Messiah.<em>  
><em>This is War.]<em>

Luka ran so fast he realized he had stopped, only when he came face to face with Cadenza and met his surprised eyes. With a momentary delay, he also discovered he had grabbed the redhead's wrist and was practically crushing it. It was a good feeling.

Cadenza needed a second to recognize the lightning-fast moving figure that had interposed between him and that strange miniaturized dragon he had found hidden in a hollow tree. When he realized, who the newcomer was, he smiled.

Luka pushed him back and took a step closer to Sodom, until he felt the creature pressed against his back, clawing his uniform and climbing up to his shoulder. He knew, in the glade there were other dangerous Duras, Ashley and Elegy, but he could not take his eyes away from Cadenza. His face was frozen in its usual cold expression, but inside he was seething with humiliation.

About a year before, Cadenza had become a General Opast. As always, Lucifer himself assigned the rank, but Cadenza, as a reward for his sadistic foolishness and his disposition to massacre, was granted a special wish. The cursed wretch asked for a week of absolute control over Bloody Cross, and Luka found himself incredibly missing Lucifer's ways, manners and patterns. The mere sight of Cadenza, now, made him feel the redhead's hands on his body, touching and violating him, and his stomach started to writhe, leaving him on the verge of retching. If Luka had ever really hated anyone beside his master, that was Cadenza.

And Cadenza knew it.

The redhead smiled even more, when he noticed little purple electric spark discharges, running along Luka's blade despite the spell-control earring, a carved silver cylinder, that he wore, which would have had to restrain the natural tendency of magic to attune to and to comply with the invocator's feelings.

"You really hate me, uh?" Cadenza murmured, his voice low but harsh; still Luka didn't deign an answer. A bit disappointed, Cadenza began again, "What are you doing here?"

"I have lost two Zweilts because of you", Luka commented frostily, giving no response to the question.

In that moment, the little figure of Sodom appeared on Luka's shoulder and hissed at the other demons, in a poor attempt to intimidate them.

Cadenza burst out laughing.

"And what would this thing be? Your new friend?"

Luka lashed laughing Ashley with a glare, and she went pale and shut up as she caught his eye. Then, the Duras returned to his main antagonist.

"He's my familiar, Cadenza. He's mine, and you're not allowed near him. Touch him, and you're dead."

Luka wasn't sure of what exactly he had said, recognizing Sodom as his familiar, but Cadenza's eyes grew wide for a moment before he glowered at him with open hatred.

"He couldn't have given you the permission to have a familiar!" he hissed. "You're nothing more than a dog, you don't deserve a servant!"

And Luka knew immediately that Cadenza had no permission to get a familiar, otherwise he would have incited it against them to prove how much stronger than Sodom his one was.

Luka raised an eyebrow, enjoying the feeling of outbalancing Cadenza, and then, without a word, he turned and headed in the direction he had come from. He stopped after a few strides.

"Lucifer would not be happy, knowing that you're wasting your time and that because of your stupid games two Zweilts have survived his beloved one's attack", he hissed and walked away, leaving unnatural silence in his wake.

Luka knew Lucifer's wrath would be focused certainly not on Cadenza, but it seemed the redhead was not so sure about that, and so he could use it to his advantage.

As he was out of sight and hearing of the other Duras, Luka started running and didn't stop until he was in a small cave he had chosen as his base. Then he stared at Sodom.

_What did I tell you?_, he asked, serious.__

_The Master doesn't like the red man. Sodom follows the red man and helps the Master._

Luka found himself torn between urges to beat Sodom and to beat himself. He wasn't at all sure there would be any difference, for him.

_You must stay away from the red man and stay here. I have lost two quarries because of your escapade of today, you know?_

Sodom lowered his ears and looked up at him. Luka tried, he tried really hard to remain angry, but when Sodom poured into his mind all his remorse and all his fear of having disappointed his Master, Luka was not even able to remember why he was scolding the creature, in the first place.

_Never mind._,he forced himself to think,_ I'll catch them again. They're idiots._

Sodom began wiggling his tail, a happy expression on his face, and stretched his forepaws to put them on Luka's cheek.

_Sodom loves his Master!_

And Luka knew it was true. Sodom was absolutely incapable of lying: he had a simple mindset, which made him be, say and do simply what he thought was right. And he was the only being in that world, who could rouse at least a shadow of a feeling in Luka.

Since when Cadenza raped him, it became difficult for Luka to express his emotions, even with sweet Sodom. Not even the little dragon knew how to put a smile on his face, but for some strange reason Sodom was able to bring a smile to his soul, and that was really a lot for a Zess.

_I know, Sodom._

_Sodom loves the Master even more because the Master accepts Sodom!_

Luka raised his eyes to the sky, pretending to be sighing. To Sodom, it had always been really important to be connected to him as a familiar, but the Duras had always avoided it because he was afraid of what he might do to the creature. In his mind, a master was a cruel person, who wasn't able not to hurt the one he owned. Now he had crossed this line, but he did not feel any impulse to hurt Sodom, so he started relaxing a bit.

Sodom suddenly trembled, and Luka froze immediately.

_What's happening?!_, he asked, worried. Was it because of their new bond?!

_Sodom want to grow up…_, the dragon cried out in his mind.

Luka frowned, confused.

_Grow up?_

_Yes. Sodom want to become big, big, big. It's a lot of time Sodom doesn't become big. Sodom feels jammed._

_What does it mean that you want…?_, Luka understood before finishing the sentence. _Do you want to transform? Do you need to became a dragon?_

Sodom nodded vigorously, even too much so because he lost his balance and fell forward. Luka caught him scarcely, at the cost of a considerable fright.

_Be careful, Sodom!_, he reproached him, but the pet didn't apologize.

Sodom shook his head forcefully, like he was trying to rearrange everything that was in his mind, then he glanced at Luka.

_Sodom want to grow up…_, and his voice was so sad that Luka gave up on arguing.

_It's ok, Sodom. You can transform._

Sodom looked up at him with joy, then he began to grow. Luka stopped him just in time before he became a big dragon in a closet-size cave.

_But not here!_, He tried to control the growing, squeezing Sodom lightly between his hands, while he carried him outside. Once they were in the little glade in front of the cave and after the Duras had made sure there weren't any Zweilts in the neighbourhood, he put Sodom on the ground and took a couple of steps away from the creature.

_Well. Now you can change, Sodom._

Sodom didn't need to be told twice, and with a shrill whistle he arched his back. If Luka was amazed to see an enormous dragon fold into a toy furball of sorts, he was even more astound, watching a toy furball expand into an enormous dragon.

Salamander's back was black, but his belly, the inner part of his wings and his throat were dark purple. His yellow eyes stood out as well as the red stone in the centre of his forehead. He was really big.

Before Luka could even think of anything, Sodom spread his wings and involuntarily uprooted ten trees.

_Sodom!_, Luka exclaimed, seeing the disaster. _They will find us!_

The dragon, confused, tried to turn around to see what he had done, and his tail immediately eradicated another fir-tree.

_SODOM! Stand still!_

Luka found his head full of vaguely confused, upset and worried emotions, which made him sigh.

He opened his mouth to counsel Sodom to fly for a while, obviously really high, where he couldn't be seen and where he couldn't leave too-evident tracks, but an umpteenth bang stopped him short.

_Sodom..!_

_It wasn't Sodom!_, the puppy replied immediately, raising his ears. _This time it wasn't Sodom!_

Luka frowned. His familiar couldn't lie, so…what the hell was going on?

Before he could understand anything, another explosion made him turn to east. Some smoke began to rise from the forest and, closing his eyes to concentrate better, Luka felt a lot of Zweilts and Duras fight among themselves.

_Bastard…_, he thought, clenching his hands into fists, but careful not to projected the insult into Sodom's mind.

Cadenza had decided to take the Zweilts and bring them to Lucifer in Luka's place, so that the General could redeem the loss of that morning and humiliate him.

_Sodom, we have to go there._

Sodom was ready. He stretched a wing out to let his master climb on his back, and then he took flight. 

_[It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie,_  
><em>the moment to live and the moment to die,<em>  
><em>the moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight…<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death, <em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world from the last to the first.<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left,<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death,<em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world, it's a brave new world, it's a brave new world.]<em>_  
><em>

Sodom flew cautiously over the battlefield and stared in confusion at those few humans, maybe just a little more than ten, who fought with all their might against Cadenza's demons and the Generals. He took some liking to a grey-haired guy, who had hit Cadenza with a strange weapon, which seemed to keep exploding.

_Sodom…_, Luka rebuked him, but without too much conviction. Even he was pleased to see Cadenza hurt.

Unfortunately, the Opast didn't seem to be in a big trouble as he laughed and threw the Zweilt against a rock ten foot away from where they were and then turned to the female Zweilt.

Luka decided he didn't want to make Sodom land in the middle of the battle. Knowing Cadenza, the bastard would have attacked his familiar and then pretended to have hit him by mistake in combat; and Luka wasn't in the mood to let anyone hurt the dragon, especially after everything he had done to keep him.

_Glide along the field, Sodom, but try not to let them see you._, he ordered.

Sodom gave him a low gurgling sound of consent, then he turned and moved further away from the battle before turning again and returning to the field closer to the trees. Some meters before his intended landing spot, Sodom started to shrink, even before touching the ground, to make sure nobody noticed him. When Luka's foot touched the grass, by his side there was a black wolf with yellow eyes and a red gem in the centre of his forehead.

The Duras blinked twice.

_Is this… normal?_

Sodom inclined his head to a side, confused by the question, then whimpered, while starting to rub his face against his master's hand. Luka found himself smiling a little for that contact, which, wet and cold as it was, seemed warm to him.

_I recommend you to stay here this time. No following the red one or any other demon, ok?_

Sodom muttered, disappointed, then he caught his master's jacket sleeve with his teeth and started tugging it to himself, in the opposite direction from the battlefield.

Luka shook his head. Carefully, he patted Sodom's snout, convincing him to let him go, then he straightened up.

_Watch my back, little one._

Sodom expression upon hearing that order was so joyful that Luka had to suppress the urge to shake his head. It took so little to make this puppy happy…

For a moment, just one, Luka wished pleasing his master were just as easy, but as that thought crossed his mind all his muscles tensed. There was a way to please his master, but for Luka it had never been so simple, and it would never be.

He loosened his shoulders to prepare for the upcoming battle, and that gesture, as a well-learned command, made every thought and feeling, which wasn't the weight of his sword in his hand, run away. His lips parted slightly to let him inhale silently; then he stole to one of the trees, which served as a kind of a border for the battlefield and crouched a bit to study the situation before plunging into the fight.

Four pairs of Zweilts and a single one had split Cadenza's group. The pair Luka had lost that morning had to face Elegy, while Ashley fought with brown-haired siblings, a male and a female. The pair, that included the gray-haired boy with that noisy weapon, had left Cadenza to fight with Rurk, an Opast as big as he was dumb, whom Luka had always been loathing. And the guy, who fight alone, was holding off on an Opast Luka had never seen before. All the Zweilts were in trouble, to an extent, but not as much as the Duras had imagined. It took him another moment to locate Cadenza, whom he found playing with two Zweilts, one of whom was just fifteen, with his black sword taller than him.

Luka gritted his teeth, seeing the way his tormentor mocked the Zweilts. That manner of fighting deeply irritated the Zess. When you took someone's life, the least you could do was to show them some respect. Nobody deserved to be deprived of their dignity, when it was already too late for them to try to regain it. Luka had killed a lot of people - he had been aloof and merciless, relentless, but never disrespectful. Yet maybe it was a thing for a Zess, maybe only a warrior, who had been a slave his whole life, could understand what it meant to find yourself humiliated and afraid that your life would end like this, in shame.

Luka tightened his grip on Roxass. It wasn't him to name his sword so - the blade appeared, when his powers had grown so much the he needed something physical to channel them, and Luka felt that was her name, no possibility of error.

He concentrated his consciousness on the wood behind him, establishing the last contact with Sodom's mind, and nodded to himself, when he felt the dragon's thoughts, proud and fixed on his duty of protecting his master. Lika leaned forward a little, loosened his shoulders again to be sure his first strike would be fluid and not rigid. He would cut off the head of that Zweilt's, who was fighting alone even before he could realize what would be happening, and then he would move on. If he somehow killed Cadenza in the rage of battle…bah, everyone could make a mistake, he was certainly not immune.

He stretched his leg forward, just a little, ready to attack the prey the tormentors were dealing with, when a different rustling noise behind his back made him stop. A second passed, and then Sodom's voice came.

_Master, Sodom doesn't understand… Why is it so?_

Luka turned, confused, but seeing for himself what was transpiring didn't help him.

A figure walked, stumbling, among the trees, staggering in a strange way. The person seemed drunk, but in their scent there was no trace of the acrid note of alcohol.

_Sodom, what's that?_, Luka asked, taking the attack position again, even if intended for a completely different target.

_A human, Master! A female human!_

As if summoned, the woman succeeded in passing through some bushes and became visible.

She was tall enough for a human - Luka estimated she would reach his mid-chest, barely; her hair was of a strange ash-bronze colour and flowed down to her mid-thigh. The strands at both the sides of her head had been braided and clasped at her nape and left open her slightly triangular face, very pale and doubtless pretty, but distorted in a grimace of suffering. Sodom walked behind her in his wolf-form and stared with confusion at the irregular movements of her legs, tangling in a long white kimono cinched at the waist with a purple band, which accentuated a body of a very young girl – probably in her late teens. In fact, her gait was so unstable that Luka would have let her pass just to see how much more she would be able to cover before falling down.

The girl was approaching, and only then the Duras realized her eyes were closed, as if to save her strength, because suddenly she opened them - maybe feeling his presence.

The enormous eyes, the same shade of amber, surrounded with thick black eyelashes, stared at him, but without really focusing on his figure. It was as if she was looking at him, without truly seeing him.

"Let me go to them…"

Luka found himself jerking, when the girl voice reached his ears, low and hoarse with pain, full of pleading so desperate that the Duras instinctively straightened. The unknown girl continued walking, without stopping or looking at him anymore. She kept her eyes fixed on the gap between the trees, from where the battle sounds came. A pained scream, doubtless from a Zweilt, arose, and the girl screamed too, as if responding to that suffering. Immediately, she darted forward, drawing strength from somewhere in order to run. Luka had to move rapidly to avoid her, in her ardor impaling herself upon the outstretched blade of Roxass. The sharp metal tip tore a flap of her kimono from her knee to the bottom hem, but she didn't seem to realize it and just ran on.

To the Duras' dismay, she plunged fearlessly into the battlefield.

Luka came near the gap the girl had cleared and made it just in time to see her doubling over and screaming. It was such a loud and heartbreaking scream that all the Duras turned to see what had happened.

One of the two female Zweilts, the one with long hair of a colour similar to the girls', shouted a 'No!' to her, but she was already lost in her own world.

Luka understood what was going to happen, just when the girl arched her back, screaming even louder, and her body shone with a light, which was white and hot. Too hot.

_The Light of God!_

Luka wasn't the only one to figure it out, but he was the one too close to react duly. While the other Duras understood their danger and vanished, he realized he did not have enough time to disappear before the Light enveloped and pulverized him.

Luka felt something hit him roughly to the stomach, and his body lost contact with the ground for a second, while something enormous slammed him down a couple of meters away from the glade. A big black figure fell down on him, and he suddenly stopped seeing anything. His body shivered, feeling the energy crackle outside of the black cocoon he was hidden in. The positivity of that force was so high that every inch of his body trembled at the mere idea of being touched by it. Then, in several minutes, the Light of God cut her power, and the air returned normal.

Despite this, Sodom waited prudently for some more seconds before raising on his paws and lifting his wings from his master's body. Then he looked at the Duras carefully.

_Sodom crushed the Master?_

Luka stared at him, dazed, for a moment, but then he let out a half-smile.

_No, Sodom saved the Master._

In a moment, Sodom returned to his furball form again and threw himself to Luka's face to lick him and gave him a lot of yelps of happiness and reproach for the concern he felt.

_I'm ok, Sodom, don't worry…_, Luka had to repeat for his familiar several times that he was fine before the little creature crouched on his shoulder and directed his gaze to the battlefield, where now an unnatural silence reigned.

_What's happening, Master?_

Luka didn't know it, but he would find out. With his magic, he called Roxass, which had fallen several meters away from him, into his hand; then he entered the glade.

As expected, all the Duras had fled. Luka could feel Rurk hadn't been fast enough, his body dust still stank after him. But what surprised him most was that the Zweilts were lying on the ground, unconscious.

_The power of the Light of God must have been too great even for them._, he speculated, watching the body of the blond Zweilt he had intended to kill regenerate before his eyes. _Or maybe the spell has had effect on their wounds and made them faint to accelerate their healing abilities…_

Not that it mattered.

Luka stepped away immediately from the unconscious body. Sometimes he hated that requirement of his to respect his enemy; he could eliminate all the Zweilts in that moment and get rid of many problems; but then he repeated to himself that, in the end, he did it just to have the same respect in return. Pious hope, but…never mind.

He hesitated just for a second, when he saw the curled lump on the ground, which a bit before had been a young woman. He shook his head - she was just a woman! Then he came up to her and knelt to look her over.

So that was the Light of God?

Her hair was scattered around her body, truly skinny, and were muddy as well as her cheeks. Her face was deathly pale, except two dark smudges under her eye circles, which made her look ill. Her thin skin seemed about to break; her breath was wheezy even in her unconscious state, and there was a pained and scared expression on her face. And yet, there was something in the way her neck came out of her shoulders, or in her slender wrists and long fingers, or maybe in her little nose and her pale-pink lips, or in the closed lavender eyelids, which… confused Luka. Despite everything, she seemed…pretty.

_Hey! No rubbish!.._

Luka shock his head, rebuking himself, then he returned his eyes to the girl. What should he do? True, she was the Light of God, and probably he should have killed her… But he couldn't do it, without giving her a possibility to defend herself. Leaving her there seemed to be the best idea, if it weren't so obvious she was in pain. The Zweilts would wake up, sooner or later, but when? Would it be soon enough to help her?

Luka cursed through his teeth and turned his eyes to Sodom, who, having brought his face closer to the girl, was gingerly analyzing her, sniffing her from time to time.

_Sodom like her…_, he finally decreed looking at his master.

Luka opened his mouth, ready to truncate his familiar's plans in the bud, but at that moment, the girl opened her eyes and stared up at him. In a second, she smiled sadly and nodded weakly.

"But leave the others be, ok?" she murmured, her eyes already closing, while her exhausted body fell prey to some spasms.

Another moment, and the girl fainted again.

Luka's eyes widened briefly. 'Leave the others be?' She had woken up to a Duras looming over her, and all she was able to think of was that she had to save her comrades' lives?!

The demon looked at Sodom. His familiar returned his stare with a calm gaze, as if he already knew what his master was going to do.

_I'm just interested in figuring her out._, Luka justified his decision, but the dragon didn't reply.

He simply took the Light of God in his jaws gently and let his master climb on his back.

It was time to return to their shelter.

_[I do believe in the light,_  
><em>raise your hands into the sky.<em>  
><em>The fight is done, the war is won,<em>  
><em>lift your hands toward the sun…<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left,<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death,<em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world from the last to the first.<em>  
><em>To the right, to the left,<em>  
><em>we will fight to the death,<em>  
><em>to the Edge of the Earth.<em>  
><em>It's a brave new world, it's a brave new world, it's a brave new world.<em>  
><em>A brave new world… The war is won… The war is won… A brave new world…]<em>

* * *

><p><em>Really, it's quite as if I was returning from the Underworld, according to how I feel right now -.-<em>

_It's all Yuki's fault: her physical description gave me a lot of problems in the translation! She didn't want to collaborate, but in the end I won! v.v_

_Ok, ok, let's stop telling idiocies and move on to what you're really thinking about me: "why is she here again?!" I've finished the chapter quite an hour after publishing the first and so I was able to start the new translation immediatly and to be ready for today... I had to say that the third chapter is not finished (not even started, truly) so I don't know when I'll be able to update again. But I'm sure I won't let the story unending, it's a present to a friend so I HAVE to finished it! :)_

_That said, how about the new chapter? And Sodom? Did you like him? I tryed to be faithful to the Sodom of the manga, but here he is a lot younger so... I had some note to made on this and the first chapter... (Now you're probably thinking: why she didn't do that in the other chapter? I could answer everything, but in the end the truth is that I wasn't able to do it because I'm really a disaster in learning new technological things and because my computer hates me!)_

_The first chapter: -The story of Luka and Luze's mother it's totally an invention of my mind, there aren't any evidences of something like that in the manga but I want to insert it the same v.v; -Luka's rapes are deduced by some imagines of the manga, expecially the one of the seal, because there Luka is naked on what seems to be a bed...if one more one makes two...; -The dialogue-monologue of Lucifer during the marking is whole taken from the manga, so it's not mine. And there I stop :)_

_For this chapter I've got less to say: the story of Sodom and his brother Gomorrah is quite totally taken from the manga, execept for some little things I added to make it all fit to the story; instead the mission Lucifer gave to Luka is all mine, I needed a way to make Luka and Yuki meet and...there it is! XD_

_I hope I didn't bored you and obviously reviews are happily accepted ;)_

_Please, if you found out any grammar or lessical mistake, let me know, ok?_

_Bye!_

_Agap_


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III  
>A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL<p>

_"…and your loneliness.…"_

Luka was stalking back and forth in front of the little cave since the time when he let Sodom leave the Light of God in it. The day before.

He sighed, cursing himself in his mind. She was only a girl aswoon! Even if she had those powers, she was unconscious: she couldn't be dangerous! And yet he wasn't able to come near. When he thought about it, he repeated to himself he avoided her just because she was a natural enemy of his Duras essence. But the truth was he couldn't explain to himself why he hadn't attack, when he saw her; why rather he had been worried about hurting her accidentally with his sword, and above all, he wondered, for what crazy and abstruse reason he had decided to take her with him. If any Duras ever discovered it, he would not stand a chance to justify his actions. The charge with treason, an endless period of tortures and then the sentence to perpetual stay in Lucifer's bedroom. They would take away Sodom and Roxass from him, too.

_Why?!_

The only logical answer, in his opinion, was that he had become a damned masochist with suicidal tendencies. And he was beginning to think it wasn't all that unlikely.  
>He shook his head, irritated, for the umpteenth time.<p>

_Is the Master ok?_

Luka turned as Sodom in his wolf-shape slipped out of the cave and came near to sit and watch him from below with evident concern.

_I'm fine. How is Sodom?_ Luka made a face, realizing he started to adapt to his familiar's manner of speaking in third person. _I meant: Sodom, how are you?_

_Sodom knows the Master isn't fine._, the dragon-turned-wolf muttered. _Sodom is sad because the Master is…weird. Can't Sodom help his Master somehow?_

Luka felt touched by that childish, but sweet kindness. He knelt on the ground and took Sodom muzzle in his hands, and then, gently, began scratching him behind his ears, making him whimper happily.

_But Sodom still knows the Master is weird._

Half a smile appeared on Luka's face as he nodded. It was difficult to divert Sodom's attention, when it was about the Duras' well-being. Regarding all the other topics, he had about the same level of concentration as a pinwheel, but when it concerned his master he became relentless.

_I know._, Luka admitted. _What would I do without my Sodom?_

Instead of laughing at that comment as Luka had intended, Sodom thought for a short while thoroughly, unaware that the question had been purely rhetorical, then he licked his master's nose.

_The Master would be sad. Sodom makes his Master smile and protects him._

For a second Luka kept silent, surprised, but then he remembered his familiar's wings and body wrapped around him during the Light of God's explosion and nodded.

_It's true. Sodom saved my life._, Luka knew his familiar desperately wanted to see him happy, so he made himself smile, even if the result was rather poor. _Thanks._

Sodom looked at him closely; then he reached out with his muzzle to rub it against his master's chest.

_Sodom wishes the Master really knew how to laugh. The Master deserves it._

Luka hesitated. He hadn't expected such comments - Sodom was usually content with the half smiles he was able to give him because he knew Luka had suppressed his own feelings long before to be able to stand the pain; but at the moment Sodom seemed unable to resign himself to that.

Not knowing what to reply, Luka continued scratching his furball's head for some minutes. Finally, it was Sodom, who broke the silence.

_Sodom is worried about the human. Why the human doesn't wake up, Master?_

Luka had to make an effort to refrain from growling. And to think that just for a moment he had been able to remove get her out of his head.

_I don't know, Sodom._, he admitted.

_So why the Master brought her here? Didn't he want to heal her?_

Oh, yeah, right. And then maybe to swear allegiance to her or conclude a contract with her. Why not, after all the rest…

_Sodom, I don't know how to heal humans._

The expression on Sodom's face clearly said how much he was offended with such excuses, and Luka gritted his teeth. The two of them stared each other in the eye for some minutes, then the Duras swore under his breath.

_OK, I'll check on her._, he yielded – and sent his best regards to his hypothetical authority. If he just thought back to how he had feared that taking Sodom as his familiar would have given him too much control over the puppy…

Sodom whimpered, satisfied, then he stepped aside to let his master enter the small cave.

When Luka crossed the threshold of his temporary shelter, the rock returned him the soft echo of his steps, letting him realize how slowly and rigidly he was walking. A low snarl formed in his throat as a warning to himself; he straightened and, a little faster, passed the little turning in the tunnel just to stop seeing the minute figure of the girl.

She was curled up on herself, in a fetal position, and so she seemed very small. Her ashy bronze hair were spilled over her body like a blanket, the tresses easily covering her entire frame. She hugged her slender knees to her chest, and that left in sight her skinny arms, too thin to speak of health. Luka briefly studied her torn kimono, which reminded him of her dash through the wood to her comrades, but he focused on her face. Slightly triangular in shape, but delicate and gentle; the girl's long and soft neck made it look like a lily on its stem. Two small lips, heart-shaped, of ashen pink, almost grey, a bit parted to let the air in and out. Her nose was a little turned-up, mounted between pale cheeks, and it served as a watershed of sorts for two big eyes, whose lilac eyelids trembled, revealing dreams in her mind. Luka couldn't see it, but he remembered the shocking amber colour of her irises, warm and dense as honey. She also smelled of honey, he realized, and of lily, and of…

_Blood?!_

Luka knelt on the ground and stretched out his hand to the girl's hair, to move it from her body and to check, if the smell came from any wound, but he paused for a short while with his fingers in that soft and rich mass. The locks were warm because of the contact with her skin and so smooth that they seem fluid. Without thinking, the Duras ran his hand along the girl's hair and found himself jerking, when the tip of his index finger began reporting her face heat to him. Beyond his control, Luka's hand rested fully, palm open, on her cheek. It was soft and lukewarm, even if the sight said it was hard and cold.

At that moment, God's Light sighed in her sleep and relaxed a bit. Her face welcomed instinctively the new source of heat, and Luka felt her rub tenderly against his palm.

The Duras bolted to his feet, and in a moment he was two steps away from her. He was gasping.

_What the hell…?!_

Luka reigned himself in to steady his breathing. It had been the surprise, nothing more, which had make him jerk. Yes, it had to be that; what else, really? He swallowed, got a grip of himself and then, his frosty face on, returned to the girl.

Light of God's expression, now, was almost worried, maybe even scared, because of the sudden disappearance of that just found source of heat. The pupils under her eyelids increased their movement speed, and she moaned, curling up even more tightly.

Luka hesitated a moment, but eventually he sighed. In a curt motion, he took off his uniform coat and then draped it carefully over her.

_It wouldn't make any sense to save her just to let her die with the cold._, he found himself mentally justifying his act.

He growled again, at himself: he had nothing to make excuses for; then he righted himself and left with a grunt.

Behind his back, God's Light opened her eyes and watched his figure go until he went round the corner.

_[The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight._  
><em>Maybe it can stop tomorrow from stealing all my time. <em>  
><em>I am here still waiting, though I still have my doubts. <em>  
><em>I am damaged at best, like you've already figured out. <em>  
><em>I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing <em>  
><em>with a broken heart that's still beating. <em>  
><em>In the pain there is healing, <em>  
><em>in your name I find meaning. <em>  
><em>So I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, <em>  
><em>I'm barely holdin' on to you.]<em>

Luka got out of the cave with a marching step only to find Sodom faithfully sitting aside on the entrance, eyes fixed on him as if waiting for something.

_She's not wounded._, he mentally muttered, laconic, but his friend didn't seem to be satisfied.

_Where is the Master's coat?_ Something in the question tone said to Luka that his familiar knew full well, where it was, and that he was really happy because of that.

_We're leaving._, Luka declared, averting his gaze and moving toward the forest.

_Master! And the human?!_

Luka sent him an irritated glare.

_She's uninjured, warm and safe. She'll be fine._ And for him, the matter was closed.

But not for the yellow-eyed wolf.

_And if she's hungry? Sodom is always hungry!_

_Sodom is a dragon…_, Luka argued.

_...and the human had the stomach growling._, Sodom countered without hesitation.

Luka was about to growl at the dragon, when it sprang to his mind how skinny the young girl was.

He, like all the other demons, didn't need to eat often. He could feed on blood, but, unlike his fellows, he didn't enjoy it, so the other option was to just eat some human meal about once in a fortnight. For him, food wasn't something fundamental; he couldn't die of hunger, and his powers weren't altered for nourishment penury; but the stomach cramps caused by starvation… he knew them well. They were what had made him grow up, when he was a child; the first master, which had led him to kill. His abdomen sent him a twinge at the memory of the months spent clasping his hands on his stomach because he didn't manage, during the fight in the arena, to take even a mouthful of the rancid food the demons had put up for grabbing, and his mind brought him back to the moments he watched the Duras testing and laughingly betting on who of the little Zess, thrown in the current fray, would win, who wouldn't be able to get near the dish and who would die. The girl's cheeks were hollow, her wrists thin and her legs lean: despite how utterly strange it seemed to him that the Zweilts kept their precious princess famished, it was obvious she hadn't been eating for a while.

Luka sighed, cursing mentally, then he met Sodom's gaze.

_I assume you haven't got even the slightest idea of what humans eat, have you?, _Sodom cocked his head, confused, and gave an uncertain guttural moan, which revealed he hadn't thought of that small detail.

_Just like I imagined…,_ Luka sighed, but then he turned his back to his familiar and headed for the wood, _Keep an eye on her and stand guard, I'll be back shortly…_

Sodom rose, sat down again and watched Luka move off. He asked himself, if his master really knew what brought him to feed the human female, then he shook his fur, deciding to have faith.  
>He was observing the wood in front of him, like a good guard, when he heard some low sounds, coming from inside of the cave. He turned, bemused; then, after making sure there was nobody nearby, he went in to check.<p>

The human was still lying on the dried grass bedding, which used to be his master's, but her eyes were open and fixed on Sodom. She looked unsure and was biting her own lips.

"Why hasn't he killed me yet?" she asked, in the lowest voice.

Sodom frowned, baffled, and without further thinking he projected his mind into the girl's, ready to defend his master.

_[The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head. _  
><em>I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead.<em>  
><em>I still see your reflection inside of my eyes<em>  
><em>that are looking for a purpose. They're still looking for life. <em>  
><em>I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing<em>  
><em>with a broken heart that's still beating.<em>  
><em>In the pain (in the pain) there is healing,<em>  
><em>in your name (in your name) I find meaning.<em>  
><em>So I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin')<em>  
><em>I'm barely holdin' on to you.]<em>

Luka snorted. After two hours of useless wandering in search for an idea, he came across some little red berries, which once he had seen being eaten by his damned master. He remembered them well because Lucifer was waving them in front of him after five months without the permission to touch food, angry since Luka had killed a rebel Zess too quickly and without making her suffer enough. Now, long after, he found himself with his red-juice-stained cap, full of small fruit, and a growl in his throat.

Luka jumped down from a fir branch as soon as he arrived to the cave, and Sodom immediately ran up to him, wagging his tail.

_Mas-ter! Mas-ter! Mas-ter!,_ he chanted in his mind, and Luka found himself smiling with just a corner of his mouth. Sodom seemed to have a lot of fun just singing his title like that, and so he let him do it, amused in spite of himself. In the end, the dragon was still a puppy, and sometimes he deserved to play a little.

_Did you have problems, while I was away, Sodom?_

The wolf shook his head, then he sniffed carefully at the cap his master had in his hand.

_Are they for her?_, he asked, bewildered, and Luka nodded.

Without thinking, he took a… strawberry?.. and offered it to Sodom, enjoying the sight of him nosing it suspiciously for some minutes before deciding to eat it.

When Sodom licked his hand, thanking him, Luka rubbed the little dragon's head with his fingers briefly and then walked to the cave. He passed the little curve… and got frozen on the spot by two big amber orbs.

_Master!_ Sodom called to him at that moment, remembering some particulars. _The human is awake!_

_Really?!_, Luka said sarcastically, before returning all his attention to his mysterious enemy.

He realized he was standing still under her gaze, unusually calm for a defenseless girl, who had woken up in her enemy's shelter, and then he closed the gap between them quickly.

She was up, sitting with her back against the rock wall and her knees snuggled by her arms and hands, but she had kept his coat on her shoulders and crouched inside it, so Luka let the cap land near her right side.

"Eat", he only said, apathetic, before turning back and intending to leave.

It was when the Duras had reached the turn that the girl recovered from the surprise and raised her eyes to his retreating figure.

"Thank you", she murmured in his direction.

Luka stopped, astonished. But had she understood the situation? He stared at her over his shoulder and found her looking at him. He waited for her to avert her gaze, but she didn't.

In the end, it was him who yielded and walked away, feeling her eyes still on his back.

_[I'm hangin' on another day_  
><em>just to see what you throw my way<em>  
><em>and I'm hanging on to the words you say:<em>  
><em>you said that I will be OK.<em>  
><em>The broken lights on the freeway left me here alone.<em>  
><em>I may have lost my way now, haven't forgotten my way home.]<em>

The tree bark broke and crumbled, but some splinters entered the flesh of his fist, making some little scarlet blood drops trickle.

"Dammit!"

Luka threw a punch to the same point, disregarding the wounds on his hand and the tremor of the branch he was on. In a second he hit the tree again, and again, and again, until his right hand started throbbing too much to even think of moving it again. Then he placed his forehead against the trunk and forced himself to take deep breaths through his clenched teeth.

He had spent at least two hours, jumping from a tree to a tree, running away from the phantom of that girl.

He raised his bloody hand and stared at it. Red cuts, big black bark chippings, small shreds of white skin; and just a short while before God's Light rubbed her face against what was now the painful jumble of colours. Luka couldn't understand, why that touch had disturbed him so thoroughly. He'd been trained to physical contact; he had taught himself how to endure it silently, even when the only thing he wanted to do was to writhe. But maybe the reason was in the nature of that touch. That girl didn't look at him with cruelty in her eyes; more like with… need. It was the first time someone besides Sodom needed him. Also there was the 'dialog' they had had. Certainly, the last thing he had expected was to be thanked. But, however, all that was a minor problem.

She was awake. She saw him, knew what he was and, no doubt, had guessed what his mission was. So what did he have to do? He couldn't just let her go, as if nothing had happened, but at the same time, he knew he didn't have the courage to kill her like that, treacherously.

Treachery… Exactly what had condemned his family. It would be a treachery to Sodom, who believed he wanted to help the girl and who liked the human; and to her, who seemed to had taken the crazy decision not to be afraid of him; but most of all, it would be a treachery to himself. It would be like going against all the remnants of honour he had been fighting to maintain, that little he still had.

He snorted. But what should he do, then? Let her go, with his best regards to her family?!

_Damn the day I met Sodom!,_ he mentally growled.

That puppy had taken a liking to the girl and continued to defend her. And unfortunately, he was really unable to deny anything, anything at all, to that little one, in spite of how insane and suicidal it was.

_What did Sodom do?!_

Luka bit his tongue hard, when he heard the shocked voice of the small dragon in his head. Why was there no end for the worst, in his existence?

_No, Sodom, nothing. It's only me, who… Sodom? Sodom?_

Luka felt his blood run cold in his veins, each one of his organs frozen, while his senses strained to pick up just a tiny sign from his familiar.

_Sodom?!_

Nothing.

Even before he realized it, Luka was running to the cave, infusing all the strength he had into his legs.

"Sodom!" he called as soon as he saw the shelter, but the little one wasn't in front of the entrance, on guard.

_SODOM?! SODOM, WHERE ARE YOU?!_

Luka started getting really agitated, almost not realizing it, too busy looking for any evidence of where his familiar had gone to. Damn, he didn't really mean what he said! He was only nervous because of God's Light, but he would have never truly regret meeting Sodom! The small dragon was… the closest to a family he had ever had; he was all he was fond of!

"SODOM, PLEASE!" he found himself calling, for the first time in his life begging someone.

"Luka..?"

The Duras paused and turned abruptly to the cave, from where the female voice calling his name had come. If wasn't aware it was impossible, he would have thought that had been God's Light, but she didn't know his name; so what the hell..?

"M-Master..?"

Luka didn't hesitate. When his familiar's voice, interrupted by sobs, reached him, he didn't lose any time asking, how could it possibly be real and not a mere projection of thoughts in his mind; instead, he evoked Roxass and ran inside.

"Sodom!"

If that Zweilt had touched Sodom, there was no wound nor fainting nor weakness, which would stop him from crushing her.

Luka took the turn running… and froze.

He was ready to see everything, anything at all, but not a child of maybe seven or eight, with a white coffee coloured skin, short black ruffled hair and big yellow eyes, wet with tears, hugging the waist of God's Light's, who, composed yet a bit worried, was running her fingers over his head. Between two drooping black cat ears.

The demon blinked, again and again, but the child was there. Damn similar to Sodom.

"Master!" the little one exclaimed, when he noticed him, getting away from the Zweilt to run and attach himself to his master's waist, while he continued his desperate crying.

Luka didn't know what to do so; a little uncertain, he lowered his sword and started running his palm on the kid's head in a caress, maybe too awkward to be defined as such.

"I don't know well enough what happened…" God's Light murmured, slightly hesitant. "All of a sudden he just ran in here crying and saying he didn't know what had happened to him and that he wanted his master. He asked me to heal him, but I can't..."

Luka stared at wailing Sodom with his face nestled against his waist, the highest spot the child's lack of height allowed him to reach, and then raised his eyes to God's Light. The Duras was sure there was something not right in that situation, but he couldn't grasp what it was exactly.

"Master! Master, Sodom don't like this! Sodom want to return Sodom! Master!"

Sodom sobbed so hard that his slight frame was shaking, and Luka was beginning to panic in earnest. He had no idea how to handle a human tearful Sodom! So, in the time of need, he did what any demon with a working brain would never, ever have done.

He glanced at the Light of God and decided to ask his prisoner for help.

"What happened to him?" he asked, his voice icy cold, just like his expression, to hide how essential it was for him to find out. He had learned from experience that if one knew what he needed, one would use it against him.

The Light of God seemed surprised to be addressed, but answered quickly, even if her voice was somewhat hoarse.

"He is… a dragon, isn't he?" she asked.

Luka hesitated for a while, but eventually he had to nod.

"Dragons, according to what I studied, have a strong somatization instinct", the girl murmured, still biting her lower lip. "It means that they are really sensitive to their mood swings and that they tend to externalize them with physical reactions."

Luka frowned.

"He changed his form because of a… strong emotion?" he asked, doubtful.

The Light of God nodded.

"Better to say, I believe so", she corrected herself immediately, blushing a bit. "I read about dragons in the Giou Residence, our Headquarters, but I don't know, if all we know about them is accurate…"

Accurate or not, that was the only lead they had, so Luka lowered his gaze on Sodom, who was a little quieter now, and knelt in front of him to bring his face to the level of the child's.

Seeing Sodom in a form… more-or-less human inspired an even stronger protective instinct in him. And that was something that sooner or later would get him killed, probably.

The Zess sighed, but then made himself give to his familiar a half-smile and ruffled his hair slowly, while Sodom sniffed.

"You know I don't really think what you've heard, don't you?" Luka asked, looking him in the eyes seriously, but keeping his voice low enough to be sure the Zweilt couldn't hear him.

Sodom hesitated for a moment, but finally he nodded and smiled a bit.

"Good boy.", Luka whispered, raising to his feet. Then he stared coldly at the woman on the other side of the cave, silent and thinking. "How can he be returned to normal?"

The Light of God shrugged her shoulders, confused.

"I think that as soon as he calms down, he will be able to do it on his own. But the next time he feels an emotion similar to the one of today, regardless of what that was, he'll return to this form."

_It won't happen again, because I'll never be such an idiot again._, Luka thought, but he took care not to show it.

Luka was ready to carry Sodom away, when his familiar one nipped in.

"If Sodom feel sad again, he will become so? Even if his Master was in danger?" the little one asked God's Light directly. Luka was surprised at the question, but Sodom didn't even look at him and continued, his head bowed and ears snooping, "Sodom thought Master going to leave him alone. If the Master get hurt and Sodom think Master can't return to Sodom, Sodom turn human and not able go save Master?"

Luka found himself really confused by the end of that speech, which ignored most of the grammar rules, despite all the training the puppy had received during those weeks, but the girl, amazingly, deciphered some meaning in that syntax.

"I imagine that – yes, you would turn human again", she nodded, making Luka frown at the confidence between his familiar and the Zweilt.

A little detail sprang to his mind, and the demon widened his eyes a second before closing them and growling under his breath. If he was right, Sodom had all the intentions of getting him killed and was seriously devoting himself to achieving his goal.

"Sodom, go out and guard.", he ordered.

For a moment, the kid look at him in surprise, but then he smiled, happy that his master still trusted him, even in that form, and ran out singing merrily the title 'Master'.

Luka waited to hear him go silent, knowing that at that point the puppy's attention would be totally on the surroundings, then he came near the Light of God and stared at her from above.

"How come you know my name?" he asked, point-blank.

The girl widened her eyes, perhaps a little scared, but then she smiled in embarrassment.

"Sodom told me", she admitted, but hurried to excuse him. "It's not his fault. I asked a question, and he tried to explain to me, who 'the Master' was, because I couldn't understand. He didn't do it on purpose, I'm sure. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong."

Obviously, Sodom hadn't thought of it; he couldn't realize how dangerous it could be for a demon to give his true name to someone else. Although 'Luka' wasn't the whole form of his one, it was, however, a part of it, and the idea that it was in hand of the Light of God made him shiver.

Luka seriously considered killing her or ordering her to stay away from Sodom, but he still needed her. It was only five weeks that Sodom had been with him, and they had spent most of the time in the humans' world, so he hadn't had a chance to discover how a dragon behaved and what his powers were, how he would grow and why. He was not even sure about what they ate because Sodom seemed able to gobble everything, which came into view. God's Light was critical in the matter of protecting Sodom, and – may he burn in Infernus – he would do everything to defend that puppy. The everything nobody had done for him or, he was practically sure, for his brother, whom he barely saw in the streets of the damned city or in the corridors of his master's castle.

"Do you know how I can solve this problem before he is killed?" he asked gravely.

The Light of God looked surprised, but she nodded.

"Tell me", Luka ordered, his voice cold, but his fists clenched in anger at the compromise he was going to settle on. "Teach me what you know about dragons. In return, I'll take you back to Zweilts."

The girl's astonishment was so great that she opened her mouth and stared at Luka, incredulous, for a good minute.

When she spoke up, for a few seconds Zess all but copied her expression because what she had asked, in the face of that possibility to escape, was: "Are you sure?"

He blinked a couple of times, unable to understand that girl's mind. Finally, he decided to give up and simply nodded, a bit rigidly, silent.

She thought about it a little more, then gave a nod of her own.

"You could constrain his powers with yours", she suggested, without looking at him, lost in following her thoughts. "In this way, he wouldn't be able to change his form without your consent, at least, mental, and then he would be free from the interference of his emotions." She finally raised her eyes to Luka, "Are you able to create a seal?"

Luka didn't growl at her, but even so, the 'Yes' he answered her with was really rude. He couldn't help it: in his mind, the images from the occasion, when it was him to suffer the other's seal, had started chasing one another.

The nausea took him, an unexpected vertigo made him stagger, forcing him to lean on the rock wall, curled on himself with his arm on his stomach. And the mere idea of doing something similar to Sodom, the thought of the little dragon going through that atrocious pain and that humiliation…

_NO! No, no, no! Never!_

He raised his eyes to the bed through the veil of memories that had crushed him; he wanted to send that Zweilt to hell and to swear in front of her that he would never, ever do something so cruel to his familiar, but he discovered that she was not there anymore. With a momentary delay, he realized two hands had settled on his arm and were holding him upright, not letting him drop to the ground.

He turned his head and for a moment stood still, his face a whisker away from the girl's. Then he came to his senses and broke loose roughly, pushing her back involuntarily and taking a step away.

"Never…" he syllabicated, ignoring the beating of his heart in his ears because of the moment's fright. "I will never hurt Sodom!"

The girl stared up at him, frowning, confused, but she didn't seem to be really hearing him. In a second, she seemed to have returned to the present and shook her head.

"It won't hurt him.", she explained; she had the astonied expression of someone, who had discovered they were speaking with someone, who couldn't understand them. "If both of you accept the contract, a simple spell will be enough to seal it, and there will be no need of any means or a mark. Only the blood seals are painful for those who receive them, but there's no need to apply one of that kind."

Luka hesitated, surprised. He didn't know there were contracts that implied no physical suffering for the slave: pity was not something to be shown often in Infernus; but at the moment he was damn grateful such options existed.

"I'll need a hand", he declared, carefull to let her know with his intonation that he was not asking for help.

The Light of God nodded.

"We have made a deal, haven't we?" she asked, rhetorically. "I'll keep my end of it."

Luka nodded, then he turned his back to her and hurried to leave before he could find himself entangled in something else with that evil woman.

The girl watched him go away.

She knew she had sold her soul to the devil, practically. Rarely the demons stood by their promise, and if they did, it was only because they happened to meet a too powerful necromancer, who could put them in their place. Certainly, it wasn't her case, so why keeping faith in that Duras? Everything in her mind told her she was doing a foolish thing; but there were little rays of light, in her memories, which supported her. That demon was extremely protective of his familiar; the way he addressed him and those fleeting smiles, which the little one received from him, made him look totally different from the cold and frightening murderer she had had to deal with. He just seemed an elder brother or a really young father, willing to do anything, including making an agreement with his worst enemy, to protect Sodom from everything and everyone. His wrath at the idea that she wanted to hurt his little one, imposing a painful seal on him, had surprised her… and in some ways reassured her. So strong a bond between a Duras and his servant had seemed quite impossible to her. And yet it existed, it was there before her eyes. And she, who had no bonds, couldn't help feeling a deep respect for them both, so committed to keep theirs.

"Luka!" she called.

The demon turned, bemused, at hearing her calling, but the Light of God only smiled at him.

"My name", she said, cocking her head a little, "is Yuki."

_[I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing_  
><em>with a broken heart that's still beating.<em>  
><em>In the pain (in the pain) there is healing,<em>  
><em>in your name I find meaning.<em>  
><em>So I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'),<em>  
><em>I'm barely holdin' on to you.<em>  
><em>I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'), I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin'),<em>  
><em>I'm barely holdin' on to you.]<em>

* * *

><p><strong><em>Hi! Really, I know that was a useless chapter but I need a way to oblige Luka and Yuki to peacefully speak to each other and, believe me, making Luka talk is really difficult! -.-<em>**

**_Speaking about other topics, I'm going to start the next chapter so I don't know when I'll update but I see coming quieter times so I'll be able to write more..._**

**_What can I tell? I've done my best as always, so I've nothing to regret. I thank all the people ho follow, favourite and, mostly, review!_**

**_I had to go, there are no notes I have to say to you, so..._**

**_Read you soon,_**

**_Agap_**

**_P.S. As always: if you see any mistakes, tell me!_**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

**THE NON-CHOICE**

_"…If only we could be together forever…"_

The door opened, and the woman came in, not bothering to knock.

Takashiro Giou, the head of God's Light's clan and leader of the Zweilt Guardians, raised his eyes, but without any particular surprise. He let the documents he was holding in his hand fall onto the top of the desk and then let himself fall against the chair backrest.

"They have reached their limit, haven't they?" he asked in a tired voice, knowing that it was, indeed, so.

The family healer nodded.

"They all have been getting worse", she admitted somberly. "Shusei-san is on the edge, already."

"I thought that after I had spoken to him there was an improvement", Takashiro commented, frowning.

"He resumed striving to eat for a week or a little less, but now he's worse than before: he doesn't touch food anymore", the healer explained.

Takashiro sighed and ran a hand over his face.

"The others?" he asked.

"Hotsuma-san is being cantankerous; just coming near his room means risking a brawl, and Kuroto-san has already provoked him a couple of times just in those five days, with the result that now they both have a lot of bruises, even if they were stopped practically immediately. Sairi-san also is tense; it has been four days that he hasn't been talking at all. Ria-san and her brother have been locking themselves up in their room since Yuki-sama's disappearance, three weeks ago, and they're still using their powers trying to find her, but to no avail. Tsukumo-san is really weak because he can't sleep; he has nightmares, and tiredness will soon make him too slow and powerless, totally unable to fight. And Toko-san lost her menstrual cycle. I have run some tests and, even if I can't say doubtlessly that it had stopped because of stress, I'm sure it isn't because of pregnancy. The only one, who seems to be still normal, is Oboro-san, but even he wanders the halls of the Twilight Mansion without a purpose and without knowing, where to go."

Takashiro closed his eyes and sighed, staying still for a moment.

"We need the Light of God", he said, as if speaking to himself, "Zweilts were born from her, in a way: their powers derived from hers. She's their only guide and salvation: if we don't find Yuki-sama soon, none of them will live long."

"With all my respect, Takashiro-san, Zweilt Guardians survive in the period between one God's Light's incarnation and the other", the woman interrupted, confused. "I don't understand, why now…"

"Because they don't know." Takashiro dismissed her, rising to his feet. "Because when she dies for them, they know that the fate has had it so and that there has been no other possibility, and so they accept it. As the things are now, Yuki-sama could be alive, dead, imprisoned, suffering… What is killing Zweilts is not the actual absence of Yuki; it's not knowing what is happening to her and having to stay put because they don't know what to do."

Three weeks had passed. Rituals, researches and patrols resulted in nothing. Each of the Zweilts did their best recklessly, but it was useless. Yuki-sama seemed to have dissolved into thin air, disappeared without a trace, and it was as if she were not even in their dimension anymore. There were two possibilities: either she'd been captured and brought to Infernus, or she was…dead. The second prospect was terrifying: if she had died without Takashiro to assist her in passing away, the Light of God wouldn't have been able to reincarnate and her powers, due to the absence of her biological heirs, would have been lost forever. The war against Duras and the salvation of the humankind in that case would have been seriously compromised.

Takashiro waited another moment, eyes closed, but then he raised his eyelids and focused his gaze on the healer.

"Gather all the Zweilts together. We have to find the princess, some way or other."

_[And I'd give up forever to touch you_  
><em>cause I know that you feel me somehow. <em>  
><em>You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be <em>  
><em>and I don't want to go home right now.]<em>

Luka, eyes closed, spread his arms a bit, rising them to the level of his stomach, and appealed to all his powers. He felt the air crack around him and little energy shocks flare up and vanish between his spread fingers, but he waited a little longer. Only when he finally felt his blood pulse in time with the spell, he began.

"_I invoke you, with an ancient incantation, from the darkest abyss. I call upon our blood pact to awaken you from eternity's flow._" Blood increased its running, always faster since his heart seemed to stop his beating, unable to stand that rhythm, and started flying. "_Will you throw yourself upon the brimstone, offering your blood alongside mine?_" The air around him was dense because of the energy that whirled his clothes and hair, blowing them away from the skin to let them waver, exposing his flesh to wind and sight, spreading his scent through the surrounding space as a warning to other predators. "_Show your dark master your will and follow me. May your power be resurrected, like those blazing crimson eyes!_" It was time. He concentrated and extended his mind, searching for the object of the seal he was creating. "_Come, king of beasts! SALAMAN-!_"

"Uh, Luka, maybe it will be better, if you stop…"

Luka opened his eyes, perplexed.

And his spells faded, like a weak match in the middle of the sea, when the demon discovered that in front of him, in the pentacle he had drawn on the ground, there was nobody.

"… S-Sodom?" he asked, a bit hesitant, blinking a couple of time.

The answer he received was an embarrassed smile, coming from God's Light, sitting on her heels on the ground on the other side of the pentacle, while she pointed to a fir-tree. At that moment, the desperate voice of Sodom's calling for help made the demon raise his eyes upwards.

The little dragon, astride a branch, was wriggling and waving his arms over his head to chase away some magpies, intent to savagely attack him.

Luka didn't understand.

"He has been…distracted…" Yuki explained, visibly hard-pressed, biting her lower lip, "by something glittering in their nest."

Luka turned his eyes again to his familiar and stood there for a minute, but eventually he sighed.

"A moment", he asked of the Zweilt before setting off to save Sodom.

"He's still a puppy, and dragons have a really dispersive mind, before maturity", she shouted after him, defending the little one. "It's not his fault; it will take him a bit of time to learn to stay concentrated for so long."

"How much is '_a bit_'?!" Luka muttered under his breath, jumping onto the branch, but careful not to let her hear him because he was not especially sure he wanted to know the answer.

His appearing was enough to make the troublesome birds flee, and immediately Sodom laughed and threw himself against him to cling to his leg. Luka was so taken aback by the sudden change in his familiar's mood that he lost his equilibrium, and so they both dropped disastrously to the ground.

Yuki let out a little scared shriek, when she saw them down, but she smiled in relief, noticing that Luka had hugged Sodom to his chest not to let him get hurt because of the fall.

It had already been three weeks since she and the Duras made the deal to exchange her liberation for her assistance with Sodom, and she had already learned how different Luka was from what he seemed to be. He was protective of 'his' puppy, respectful with her, proud and tenacious, but also sad. It hadn't taken her too long to understand it: his soul's despair appeared obvious, if only you scratched his icy façade a little. And since he didn't talk much, she decided to ask Sodom, secretly, about his master. That little, which the dragon, bona fide convinced that he was doing nothing wrong, had been able to tell her, had really upset her. It was no surprise that the demons were so brutal, if they were brought up in such a cruel way. Certainly, Luka's situation had been aggravated by his family status, but it was difficult for her to accept that a child could have been treated in such a way, even if she had been studying the betrayers' clan since her first life because the Crosszerias had always been at the forefront in battles, so she knew they were slaves in their society. On balance, she would even have understood, if Luka had become the killer his world expected him to be. However, he wasn't that kind of person: maybe, he was no more, or maybe he never had been. She admired him for the moral code he had appointed himself and strictly followed, even when it came at a high cost for him. Yuki had never known anyone like him before.

Shaking her head a bit, she returned to reality and smiled sweetly, looking at the Duras' pathetic attempts at scolding Sodom. Ultimately, all the three of them knew he would never be able to do it, but every time he had to try - and duly failed, giving up with a sigh in the face of the puppy's pleading expression.

The little dragon had tied part of his powers to his master's ones as many as ten days before, but he had not yet been able to stay still enough to let Luka return him to his animal shape. Yuki was looking for a way to do it all sooner, but since then they had only been able to constrain Sodom's dragon shape with Luka's power, while the familiar had control over the other three forms he had developed. They could leave everything the way it was, but both she and Luka had some reservations on giving to the puppy the opportunity to turn human on a whim.

"Let's try again.", Luka muttered, coming near, and his voice shook Yuki out of her reverie, in which she had got lost again.

But exactly at that moment Sodom yawned loudly, and Yuki couldn't refrain from laughing at Luka's desperate expression.

"Master, Sodom is…" Sodom paused. He frowned, glanced at Yuki and then returned his eyes to his master with an expression of concentration. "_I am_ tired."

Yuki nodded when the puppy looked at her, seeking for confirmation, and the little one broke into an enormous smile.

"Sodom am good, did you see Master?"

Luka smiled with a corner of his lips. Yuki seemed to be able to succeed, where he had failed, teaching Sodom to refer to himself in first person. The results were still poor, but it was a good step forward.

"I saw, and you're really good.", he praised the little dragon, ruffling his hair.

Sodom laughed and ran into the cave, to the bedding he had been sharing with Yuki.

Luka, out of the tail of his eye, spied on God's Light, who, laughing softly, had turned to follow running Sodom with her gaze. She accepted his familiar without any problem; since the first night, when the little one fell asleep by her side, she had readily let him sleep, hugging her, while Luka stayed outside, guarding.

Seeing them, huddled up to one another in the night, so similar to a pair of siblings or to a young mother with her child, always made his protective instinct flare dramatically.

"He's really sweet.", God's Light commented, bringing him back to reality.

Luka recognized he had to answer something, so he snorted.

"He causes a lot of trouble.", he muttered, feeling those amber-coloured eyes look at him and finding himself surprisingly glancing away in some strange embarrassment.

"Not so much, in the end…" she tried to defend the puppy, not losing her smile, because she knew it wasn't necessary as, underneath it all, the demon felt big affection for his familiar. "Or more exactly, not as much as he could."

Luka shrugged, but didn't reply.

The silence stretched on and became so heavy the Duras realized that, beyond the topic of Sodom, there was nothing they talked about. Not that it was strange: she was his prisoner, and he kept her alive just for a merely practical matter. However, that silence made him anxious.

All of a sudden, he remembered a thing that had roused his curiosity, and before he could make up his mind, his mouth had already given breath to his question.

"Why didn't they feed you?"

Yuki raised her eyes to him, totally surprised.

"You're skinny", he hurried to explain, turning his gaze away and fixing it on the cave. "They fed you less than what your body needed. I was just wondering, why Zweilts had weakened their source of life so much."

Yuki blushed deeply, despite the indirect reassuring enlightenment from Luka's question, and lowered her head unexpectedly.

Luka was not really surprised, guessing that she had to have done something to be punished and deprived of food, but he was surprised a lot, when he caught himself thinking about going hunting to give her something more nutritious than berries, fruit and vegetables.

"It's not like what you think."

Luka once more lowered his gaze to Yuki, still on her knees on the ground at his side, and found her fiddling with the fabric of the already shredded skirt of her kimono. She looked hesitant.

"It's not that I was interested.", he said, shrugging. "It only seems a bit stupid, to me."

"They gave me food", she interrupted, not looking at him. Just before Luka's eyes, Yuki's gaze became empty and lifeless, as vacuous and melancholic as he had never seen it before, while a bitter fake smile appeared on her face. "All I could wish," she continued, apparently disregarding the gaze he was keeping on her, "everything I wanted, I just had to ask to get it. Food as well as everything else, just a word of mine, and I would have had anything. Great, wasn't it?" Luka couldn't imagine it, especially hearing her pained tone. It was like she were playing a part according to some script without really believing in it, but she was still repeating her lines. "They gave me food, really, but I couldn't eat it."

Yuki sighed and, slowly, raised to her feet and swept away the dust from her skirt with her hands. Luka was looking at her, shocked.

Then… she had reduced herself to that state on her own?!

"Why?!" he asked, not realizing that his voice had lost all the apathy.

Yuki raised her eyes to him and in order to do that she had to lift her chin a bit, too, reminding him how much shorter she was. And in the end, after a moment, she smiled, even if she did it with such sadness that Luka found it hard to recognize in her the girl he had known until then.

"I've been…ill.", she admitted, a bit uncertain, as if looking for suitable words to explain herself. "I was really weak, I had almost no strength to move, and I rejected everything I was able to eat."

Luka was surprised, but, in fact, God's Light seemed really debilitated to him at their first meeting, on the day of that fight, and she was hardly walking, then. Come to think of it, she had recovered in an incredible way, considering her previous condition: she ate without problems, laughed with Sodom and, even if she usually preferred sitting on something or on her heels, walked around without any difficulties, maybe a little slowly, but there was nothing too strange or worrisome about that.

"Now you're okay.", the demon let slip from his tongue, expressing his thoughts and fixing her with a suspicious glare. Maybe, rapid healing was God Light's power?

Yuki jerked, as if she had been hit treacherously; then she raised her slightly dazed eyes to him, as if he had told her something incredible, of which she had never thought before. For a moment, she stood there, watching him, then she lowered her gaze to her hands, nodding to herself in a troubled way.

Luka watched her, bemused, and in a few seconds, she smiled a bit, in a strange, but really…sweet…way. And it was him, who thought something like that, though he really knew no much about being sweet…

"I feel better, now.", she murmured, then, still watching her own hands, but with a slightly more normal expression on her face. "I would have never believed it possible before, but now it is as if I were healed."

Luka frowned.

"But you are, aren't you?" he asked. What strange words she had chosen! According to what he saw, she seemed so perfectly healthy and in full vigour that he hardly believed she had been in the state she described before.

Yuki, again, seemed surprised for a moment, but then she smiled.

"Sorry, sorry!" she laughed a little, excusing herself with her cheeks blushing. "I…my wording was wrong."

Luka stared at her, even more confused by her attitude and her causeless mood swings, but in the end he shrugged and headed to the wood. Obviously, he was going hunting solely because he wanted Sodom to eat some meat, not because he cared about God's Light's regaining her strength.

_[And all I can taste is this moment,_  
><em>and all I can breathe is your life,<em>  
><em>cause sooner or later it's over:<em>  
><em>I just don't want to miss you tonight.]<em>

Yuki watched Luka go. He had a beautiful gait, she decided, and something in the manner he kept his shoulders gave him the appearance of an invincible warrior, ready to challenge anyone, who got in his way. However, she wasn't thinking just about that, but also about the questions he had asked. Those were signs that he truly cared about her, her needs and her requirements; but those also confirmed that he didn't know anything. Takashiro told her that he had done everything he could for the truth about Light of God's possessor's destiny not to leak away, but she hadn't believed it would have really worked.

She sighed. Carried away by the moment, she had nearly told to a demon the key to destroying her. If Duras ever discovered, what her power really was and what the consequences to her were, they would start wounding Zweilts on purpose, rather than trying to kill them, and, in such a regime, she wouldn't be able to resist for long.

_Stupid._, she reproached herself, but then she raised her gaze to where Luka had disappeared.

Surely, it was her madness drawing near again, after the intermission of those days, because Yuki had the weird feeling of being able to trust him.

_What a folly._, she shook her head. _A Duras and a Zweilt, how could they ever coexist in peace?_

And yet, a low voice whispered in her head, wasn't it exactly what they had been doing for about three weeks?

_[And I don't want the world to see me _  
><em>cause I don't think that they'd understand.<em>  
><em>When everything's made to be broken,<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.]<em>

Luka stopped abruptly in the middle of his running, leaving furrows in the ground, where his feet pivoted to let him turn back immediately.

He had gone hunting, eventually, and had found a hare; so, short of traps, he had been chasing after the animal. The problem was that someone was now chasing after him. No longer than a couple of seconds - Luka had felt him at once; and so the demon looked for a clear spot, where he could start a battle without his opponent having a hundred of hideouts.

He curled his lips in disdain and growled to his mysterious chaser, his tense body bent forward slightly in an aggressive posture, ready to attack.

An evil laugh accompanied the entering of the tall red-headed Duras, and Luka instinctively stiffened.

_No!_, his mind hastily reached out to Sodom to check on him and Yuki, but he stopped himself just in time, when his powers felt the seal he had put around the cave. If he had contacted his familiar, the protection would have vanished, and Cadenza would have been able to sense the little dragon as easily as Luka could. He had already made that mistake once, in Infernus, when his mental contact with Sodom, without his knowledge, broke the masking seal, making the little dragon detectable for his master, and he wouldn't repeat that error.

He set his jaw, forcing himself to become impassive and straightened up, squaring his shoulders, though his whole body was screaming at him to attack and then to run to protect the occupants of the shelter. He just had to trust the fact that his barrier was still up, and so nobody had crushed it, he didn't have any other choice.

"Cadenza."

The Duras laughed upon hearing the warning in Luka's voice and, without even hinting at an assault, started applauding slowly, taunting him.

The Zess got tense. It wasn't a good sign, Cadenza was too happy.

"Ah, Luka…" the redhead sighed, stopping applauding to put his hands on his own hips, already just a step away from his interlocutor, at too short a distance for a normal conversation. "I would never believe there could be someone so… so…" he brought his head to Luka's one, exhaling the last word into his face, "…idiotic."

Luka retreated a step, growling in warning.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, furious. Every fiber of his body was beginning to pull him in the direction of the cave; he wanted to go to the only two creatures his subdued spirit wished to protect, and he had to call upon all his self-control not to execute that command.

Cadenza laughed again, then took a step back, as if consenting the whim of a capricious child's, and spread his arms to show he was unarmed. Not that it mattered, anyway, since he would have been able to materialize his sword from nothingness at any moment.

"I'm here just to check", he explained, his voice calm. "You can imagine on whose behalf, can't you?"

Luka stiffened, a shiver ran down his spine, and his eyes widened a bit.

_Dammit!_ It had already been three weeks that he didn't report or fight to stay with Sodom; why hadn't he thought of devising an excuse?!

"Zweilts are locked up in the Twilight Mansion", he told then, giving breath to the first lie his mind had been able to invent. "I can't get them inside; I have to wait for them to come out."

"Why so defensive, Luka?" Cadenza pretended to be surprised and cocked his head a little. "I didn't accuse you of anything, did I?"

Luka forced himself not to clench his fists. He made a mistake, and Cadenza knew it: he wouldn't lose the opportunity to work on it.

"If you're not here to learn how the hunt is going, then get lost. I have other things to do.", he growled, turning to move away from the redhead.

He had not yet taken a step, when Cadenza grabbed him by an arm and, turning him round, threw him backward to slam against a tree. Luka felt the blow, the dull pain of the impact, and immediately bended his knees slightly in a springy crouch, evoking a spell, teeth bared and a furious growling in his throat. Mallow-purple electric shocks started cracking around him.

Cadenza didn't lose his playful demeanor, but rather burst out laughing. The other Duras liked provoking him, and Luka knew it; Cadenza wanted him to make a mistake so that he could report it back to Lucifer and see him punished by his master. He had not to play his game; otherwise, it would end really badly.

Striving to suppress the bewitching voice inside, which was telling him to cut that damned wretch to pieces and thus to solve a lot of his problems, Luka straightened. His back gave him a weak protest because of this movement, but he was used to worse. Keeping the tree behind him, he stared at Cadenza.

"What. Do. You. Want?" he growled.

Cadenza directed an eager glance to his body, making his gaze slide from head to toe in such a slow and intensive manner that Luka seemed to feel his hands on his skin the way they had roamed there some time before. He felt sick.

"Cadenza!" he raised his voice instinctively, shocked by the turn the events were taking; but he instantly realized he had made the umpteenth mistake.

In a second, the Duras appeared close to him and grabbed him by the hair to slam him against the trunk again, and then the redhead pushed his body against his, blocking his movements.

Luka panicked more. He was a Zess, so he didn't have the permission to stop a free demon from using him, but maybe…

"You're not allowed to do this.", he hissed as Cadenza's teeth approached his neck. "I'm more than sure that my master didn't give you the permission to do this. Drop it, or we'll see how he will react, when he learns that someone has touched his Zess without his consent."

A flash of something, maybe fear, shot in the Duras' eyes for a second before he returned to his malignantly satisfied expression.

To Luka's great relief, Cadenza receded. He didn't actually step back, but that proved that he really didn't have the permission to touch the king's toy, and that was quite a bit.

"Do you want to know why I have come here? OK, then", the redhead hissed, keeping his face at a distance of an exhalation from Luka's. His voice exuded satisfaction again, and Luka was more than sure it wasn't a good thing. "It's exactly about your dear Zweilts, you know? It's really strange that they have locked themselves up in their headquarters and don't do anything, isn't it? It makes no sense, it goes against their pathetic moralistic ideals, so I wondered what they were plotting. It surprised me a lot that you didn't investigate and simply stood by, waiting; you're not a greenhorn and not even someone who can do such mistakes. However, do you want to know what I have discovered? Why Zweilts aren't fighting?" Luka stiffened, guessing the upcoming catastrophe. "It seems that their princess, the Light of God, has incredibly…vanished. Puff! Into nothingness. And listen, what else I've discovered: the girl disappeared right after the battle against us. I'm sure you remember that fight, during which you, mysteriously, didn't appear. Where were you, Luka? Didn't you hear the explosion?"

"I heard it.", the demon invented, keeping his eyes fixed on the redhead's. "That was just the reason why I stood away: you know well that I would have died, if I had got near. That's why even you ran away, isn't that?"

Cadenza gritted his teeth for a second, but then he closed his eyes and smiled haughtily.

"Right, right…" he murmured, but Luka was sure there was something else. "It only seems a bit strange to me, that your communication with Infernus stopped right at that moment. What an absurd coincidence, don't you think?" Luka found it wiser not to answer and kept silent. He knew from Cadenza's expression that the redhead didn't genuinely believed he had the Light of God; it was more probable that he was just trying to tease him in order to lure him into a trap; so he had to keep calm and not to let Cadenza understand there was some truth in his accusations. "Another coincidence is that I took view of the local area, and your more recent traces didn't spread far from that cave nearby. Have you been staying in your shelter for three weeks, Luka? You're not ill, I hope."

_Damned bastard, one day I'll turn you to pieces._

"I had things to do", the Duras growled, getting more furious. "You really have no other orders to execute, if you have so much time to worry about what I do."

Cadenza didn't react well to Luka's last insinuation and tightened the hold of his hand on the black hair so that, with the other one, he could grab the shirt on the Zess' chest, but when he brought his face nearer to growl something, he paused. A strange fragrance, not Luka's or his familiar's, reached his nostrils. It was sweetish, nauseating for him, clearly belonging to…

"…a woman, Luka?" Cadenza widened his eyes as a shining and satisfied smile appeared on his face.

Luka felt as if he were dying inwardly, and froze up. That was really not good. Theoretically, he couldn't have a relationship with anyone but his master, unless that one wanted it otherwise, and Cadenza was surely thinking that the female scent was a proof of his 'infidelity'; but if he ever discovered that it was God's Light's… Luka had to do something, and fast, or the situation would pass the point of no return.

He quickly reasoned: Cadenza wanted to get him in trouble, it was the only thing that mattered to him - he didn't believe Luka had God's Light, he simply thought the Zess was taking advantage of Zweilts' absence to try to escape. He couldn't deny anymore that he'd been in contact with a woman and, with the clear evidence that he had stayed in the wood, he couldn't even invent a casual contact.

Luka had to make a decision rapidly. If his master learned that he had had a female scent on him, he would undoubtedly punish him. If he denied having had a partner, Cadenza would demand to check the cave and would find the Light of God, safe and sound as well as free. It wasn't really a choice.

"Stay out of this!" he, accordingly, growled, defensive. "This doesn't concern you!"

Cadenza burst out laughing, so hard that he stepped back and doubled over, keeping his hands on his stomach. Luka clenched his fists, but he forced himself not to say anything. Better a slap then a dagger in the chest.

"Oh, Luka! I knew you were an idiot, but reaching such great heights..!" the red-haired man said, laughing. After a while, he stopped and straightened, but only to stare at Luka with a happy expression and a crazy light in his eyes. "He'll cut you to pieces, when he finds out you had a lover in the human realm! You'll never see anything apart from his bedroom for the rest of eternity, and you can say goodbye to your pet! I can't wait to see you whimper!"

Luka lunged at the redhead, unable to stand it anymore, but Cadenza vanished.

"Bastard…" the Zess growled, but then his eyes grew wide.

If Cadenza was going to report it to his master, in a matter of minutes Luka would be summoned, and his Contract wouldn't allow him to refuse or postpone.

He had to take Sodom and Yuki to safety before then. 

_[And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming_  
><em>or the moment of truth in your lies.<em>  
><em>When everything feels like the movies,<em>  
><em>yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive.]<em> 

Yuki tried to compose herself, but eventually she had to put a hand to her lips to contain her laughter.

Sodom was striving to pass into his human form from his furball one he had finally regained, but it really seemed there was no way for him to achieve that, and so Yuki found herself staring at a little wad of black fur, which was swelling like a treacherously wetted cat, blowing and squeaking.  
>"Don't worry, Sodom", she said in the end, taking the creature between her palms and lifting him to the level of her face. "It will be getting easier with time, you still have to learn."<p>

In reply, the little one licked the tip of her noise, making her laugh again. Only to stop abruptly, when someone entered the cave at a run.

Yuki raised her gaze, surprised, to see Luka in front of her, pale and panting after his race.

"What's happening?" she asked, jumping to her feet and instinctively tightening her hold on Sodom.

Luka ignored her to grab his own cap and to take off his coat. He threw both the items onto the pallet, made Yuki move away a bit and then, with an energy discharge, set all those on fire to hide her scent from anyone, in case Cadenza or his master decided to hunt his down elusive lover.

"I carry you home", he ordered to the girl, without listening to her weak requests for explanation.

Yuki, again, tried to retort, but before she could, Luka bowed and picked her up, putting an arm under her knees and the other one behind her shoulders. She let out a shriek of surprise and moved her hand away from Sodom to cling to Luka's shirt.

"What are you doing?!" she asked, shocked.

"Can you open a hole in the barrier around the Main House?" Luka asked, ignoring her question.

Yuki hesitated, confused.

"But Sodom…?"

"Can you or not?!" he growled.

Yuki jerked, astounded, but finally she nodded, although still a bit hesitant, and Luka, without asking anything more, broke into a run. 

_[And I don't want the world to see me_  
><em>cause I don't think that they'd understand.<em>  
><em>When everything's made to be broken,<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.]<em> 

The Light of God looked at the Duras' face, while he jumped from a tree to a tree to bring her to her house. She had agreed to let him in, and a part of her soul was calling her an idiot because of that, but she coaxed it, telling herself that there would be the Zweilts, that she had already recuperated and so Luka, even if he had bad intentions, wouldn't be able to hurt her.

Her other part, the one, which had surely gone mad already, was praying in a low voice for that one and only true bond she had ever created in her lives not to betray her.

_[And I don't want the world to see me _  
><em>cause I don't think that they'd understand.<em>  
><em>When everything's made to be broken,<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.]<em>

Luka continued running, even when he saw the Kekkai in front of him. Yuki told him she could let him in, and he didn't have time to doubt her word.

The barrier opened just in front of them, a moment before they bumped into it, and closed again immediately after their passing through.

"I can't open too big a breach for too long", Yuki explained softly, her hands wrapped around Sodom. "Takashiro would have noticed it, and sincerely, I don't want them to destroy you on account of that you have helped me."

Her caring surprised Luka; however, he felt compelled to set her scale of priorities right again.  
>"You trust that pack of guys too much", he muttered. "They wouldn't be able to catch me, even if I decided to let them do it."<p>

Yuki gave him a dirty look, but she had a smile on her lips, and that confused Luka.

They whizzed past the garden, heading to the house, which stood with its back to them. Yuki decided it was better for them: passing the main door with a Duras as a sedan chair didn't struck her as the best idea possible.

"Which room?" Luka asked, making her jerk.

"Last floor, on the extreme left, the window under the tower", she explained, embarrassed.

Takashiro had reserved a whole wing of the House for her, and nobody had access to it but her. She strove to see the positive aspect of the matter: Luka would not be risking being discovered.

The demon sped up even more, moving so swiftly that two women, intent to collect something in the garden, didn't see him passing by. In a moment, he slipped into the window Yuki had pointed to, set her down and drew the curtains behind him.

Both of them stood still, silently, for a moment. Eventually, it was Yuki, who broke the silence.

"What's happened, Luka?" she whispered. Sitting on her heels on the floor, her hands absently caressing the small furball, who had fallen asleep, Yuki bowed her head, and her voice was very sad. "Our pact hasn't been fully executed: Sodom cannot control his transformations yet."

Luka checked for nobody to be in the vicinity, then he sighed.

"I know; because of that, I leave him to you."

When Yuki jerked and raised her widened eyes to him, Luka was still absorbing the blow of the pain those words had caused him. Parting from Sodom was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but taking him along meant endangering him tremendously.

"What are you doing?!" Yuki exclaimed. God's Light ran to her own bed to put Sodom there, then took care to cover his ears with the blanket, before returning to the Duras. "Are you mad?! Sodom will take it very badly!"

Luka clenched his fists, but then, through his teeth, he rattled off to God's Light that minimum she had to know about his meeting with Cadenza, some time before.

"If I bring Sodom with me now, they'll kill him.", he finished, his stomach revolting at the mere thought. "At least, he trusts you."

Yuki stared at him. There was a terribly sad expression on her face, and Luka saw, for the first time in his life, someone weep for him.

"You can stay here; maybe, there's a way to…"

"I have a Contract.", Luka stopped her, shaking his head. "There's no way I can disobey."

Yuki closed her eyes, as if in severe pain, and only after some moments she nodded.

"Thank you, Luka. For everything.", she whispered. "If there's something I can do…"

Luka hesitated. The idea of asking of her what others had always done to him hurt him: he knew how terrible it was to be forced to yield a gesture of love to someone you didn't know or knew and hated; but he didn't have so many alternatives.

"My master will ask me if I had a partner.", he murmured, watching her face, but striving to not see her. "The Contract will make me say the truth - that I haven't slept with anyone; and if that ever happens, my master will start investigating on your scent."

Yuki seemed to be perplexed for a second, then she blushed a bit, but held Luka's gaze.

"Then…what?" she asked slowly. "Are you asking me to…sleep with you so that you could tell your master you had effectively had a relationship?"

Luka shook his head.

There was no time for that, and besides, he was not sure he wanted to make Yuki experience an empty and only passively-consensual relationship. However, if he wanted to save her and to keep Sodom safe, he had to bring something to his master.

"Forgive me.", he only murmured.

Yuki didn't have time to ask. Luka took her face in his hands and firmly pressed his lips to hers.

The demon stiffened and immediately backed away from her.

What the hell…?! Something didn't go the way it had to. He should have felt the skin of her lips giving in under his thrust, then the mellow and slimy consistency of her saliva, the slight pain of the impact of their faces, and that was it. Certainly, not too nice sensations, but nothing too bizarre, either. Instead, something hadn't worked; maybe it had been their powers interfering. Luka had felt a strange heat there, on his lips, and her skin and saliva hadn't irritated him; but now he felt as if her mouth were still on his, as if it had left a brand, which was burning, but wasn't scorching him. He had stepped back immediately, but he was breathing hard, all the same, as if he had been running for hours, and there was something which was beating in his ears, drowning the other sounds.

When he was able to focus on the scene in front of him, Yuki seemed to be not in a better state than himself.

Luka retreated to the window, drew the curtains back and opened the shutter; then he tried to concentrate for another moment.

"Sodom, I order you to stay with Yuki", he declared, infusing all his power in that order, making it official and unbreakable. For a second more, he stared at Sodom, all curled up under the white blanket, and felt a big gratitude to him for having loved a slave like him in that childish and sincere way of his. Finally, he glanced at Yuki. "Please, take care of him."

She nodded, like in a trance, and Luka let himself drop down out of the window without looking back. 

_[And I don't want the world to see me _  
><em>cause I don't think that they'd understand.<em>  
><em>When everything's made to be broken,<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.<em>  
><em>I just want you to know who I am.]<em> 

Luka continued running, although he knew he was doing it without a destination or a motive. He had neither place to go to, for the cave wouldn't have protected him, nor anyone to reach out to. Anyway, it wouldn't matter for long, where or with whom he was: when his master called him, nothing would be important anymore, and he would be in hell again, with no opportunity of escape. However, he wasn't able to stop because too much thoughts were chasing after him.

What had he done?! An idiocy, doubtless. He had felt the need to protect God's Light, not only Sodom; and so he had provided Cadenza with what he had wanted - an excuse to get him in trouble - in order to keep the redhead Duras away from them. But Yuki was nobody to him, she wasn't one of his familiars or a member of his clan or his family; they didn't know each other, and, surely, he didn't owe anything to her. Dammit, she was the Zweilts' princess! The leader of his enemies! What the hell had sprung to his mind?!

He had simply screwed up big time, that was the only explanation. And to save her, he had just damned himself to a fate that not even Cadenza would have ever invented for him.

He was barely outside the barrier, with Yuki's help, when it happened.

_LUKA!_

His breath was taken away. The scorching chains of the Contract rose from the ground and wrapped around him immediately, forcing him to his knees, although he hadn't disobeyed any order. His seared skin began to swell as the first blisters appeared, while his body was steadily being enveloped in the new loops of burning-hot metal. He set his teeth, striving not to make a sound, but the pain only increased.

_LUKA, COME HERE IMMEDIATELY!_

And Luka had no choice; he didn't take any decision. Before he could even think about what the voice in his mind had ordered, everything around him went black, as if he were falling into the darkest abyss of the universe.

Come to think if it, that was exactly what was happening to him.

_[I just want you to know who I am.]_

* * *

><p><em>I'm sorry, really sorry for the late but this chapter was really difficult to be written. <em>

_However, now I'm here and I have to say that the chapter is totally mine, except for the spell Luka use in the first part of the chapter: that was taken from the anime :)_

_I hope I'll update soon the fifth and the sixth chapter because I see in front of me a little period of peace before the storm of May, so I'll try to finish the story during that time XD_

_A really big 'thanks' go to the girl who help me with a sentence which alone gave me a lot of troubles XD Thanks, Gabrielle._

_Ok, let's see again :)_

_Write you soon,_

**_Agap_**


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter V  
><em>_FROM THIS DAY ON_

_"I'll say it as many times as you wish:_

_..."_

Luka had persuaded himself to be strong.  
>That week, Lucifer provided him with an abundant evidence of how foolish that idea of his had been.<br>His existence had always been a jumble of sombre colours, mainly blood red and black as darkness, full of screams and pain, for which he could hardly find a reason. But he had got through everything, he told himself. He had got through everything, survived every torture, emerged the winner from every fight. He had learned, he had been telling himself, to endure his master's punishments without losing another bit of his own sanity.  
>But when Lucifer's nails elongated into his body, switching from scratching his skin to tearing his flesh, each one of those words in his self-motivating speech became empty. The king continued keeping Luka pressed against him, standing behind him and using that position to insert his growing talons even further in the chest of Zess', who had been forced to his knees in front of Lucifer's throne.<br>Cadenza, from a corner of the room, watched the scene with a sadistic smile on his lips. Luka wanted to make him gobble all his teeth.  
>Lucifer's arms were crossed over Zess' chest, like the late man's limbs, and he curled his fingers, digging deep into the thin body. If Luka were a human, he would have already been dead.<br>"So?!" Lucifer asked, and an enraged growl accompanied the umpteenth question.  
>Luka clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, but shook his head.<br>"I've already told you that…" he tried, his voice unsteady with the pain, but Lucifer didn't let him finish.  
>"LIAR!" he shouted, dragging his fingers through Luka's flesh to leave ten signs on his skin, five and five, two sets of lines, mirroring each other and forming an uneven blood red 'X', as big as Zess' chest.<br>Luka barely restrained a scream as he fell forward, but a moan escaped his lips, all the same. He landed face down; the wounds burned just like the chains, which were forcing him to the ground and blocking his arms behind his back; the Duras found himself immobilized. His master came to his side, knelt there and then grabbed him by the hair on the top of his skull to make him raise his head and look him in the eye. A blood trickle slipped down from a corner of Luka's mouth, a clear proof of the damage his internal organs had sustained from all the kicks and punches he had been subjected to.  
>Lucifer stared at him for a moment, then smiled and leaned forward. Luka shivered, disgusted, when he felt the demon king's tongue lick away the drop of blood, dripping from his lips.<br>Suddenly Lucifer backed away, as if having remembered abruptly about being furious, and slammed Luka to the ground again before returning nervously to his throne, although without sitting down on it.  
>"Once more, Luka…" he asked, his calm voice hiding his rage, "Did you have a lover in the human realm?"<br>Luka set his jaw. If only he had been able to say 'yes', then his master would have killed him, and it all would have been finished already, but his Contract destroyed any chance for him to tell a lie.  
>"No…" he murmured, aware that his response would result in another fit of anger against him.<br>But, surprisingly, Lucifer took a deep breath and turned around, however without attacking him. The demon lord stared at him with disdain, pointing at Cadenza.  
>"Why did he smell a woman's scent?" he asked then, his tone accusing.<br>Again, Luka couldn't do anything but close his eyes, while his mouth gave breath to the truth he so desperately wanted to keep to himself.  
>"I had a woman with me... those three weeks…" he whispered, while managing to prevent himself from saying she was the Light of God.<br>Lucifer's scream of wrath mixed with a sudden peal of thunder and sounds of heavy rain from behind the enormous windows of red and black stained glass, representing massacre scenes.  
>"Did you sleep with her?!" Lucifer asked, his voice trembling with fury.<br>Luka, unexpectedly, shook his head.  
>Lucifer immediately went after him again. The king's hand tightened around his slave's neck, forcing him to rise on his feet, and the chains that had kept Luka attached to the ground docilely complied with their creator's movement.<br>"Don't you dare lie to me!" Lucifer shouted in his face before backhanding Zess with such a violent might that the blow broke his nose.  
>Luka gasped as the blood poured down his throat, blocking his lungs and depriving him of oxygen, but still he made an effort to shook his head.<br>Lucifer stared at him with rage a second longer, but then something flashed in his eyes, and his furious expression got replaced with a look of absurd amusement.  
>"You have done nothing with her…" he muttered, realizing just at that moment what his slave had told him for at least a thousand times before.<br>Luka felt the grip on his neck disappear and fell on the ground on all fours; then he simply crossed his arms on his chest to contain the anguish from his wounds, while his body shook in a coughing fit, trying to clear his lungs and throat from the blood.  
>"You have done nothing with her", Lucifer repeated, gazing at him from above and beginning to laugh. "You have stayed with her for three weeks, and you haven't been able to do anything!"<br>Luka said nothing, but a part of him sighed sadly. Lucifer was really incoherent: one minute he was angry because he thought his slave had slept with a woman and the next minute he was mocking him because he hadn't done it. And that was the principal factor why Luka had never been able to foresee how to behave to avoid one of his master's fits of anger. Maybe there was simply no way to elude them: all in all, it wasn't even a rare occasion that Lucifer beat him without any reason.  
>Luka felt some strange emptiness in his stomach, and then black shadows swirled around him. A moment later he found himself lying on his master's bed, in his room, naked and prone.<br>Lucifer laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and started caressing his head, passing his fingers slowly through his hair.  
>"I'm really, really glad you haven't betrayed me, Luka", he began calmly. "I wouldn't have forgiven you in that case, but as it is…" Luka strove to not shiver with aversion, when his master leaned closer to him to rub his nose against Zess' neck, inhaling deeply. "I'll take her scent off you", the king promised, "and then I'll never let you go away again. I'll find someone else to take care of Zweilts, maybe Cadenza, and you'll stay here, instead. I won't let you leave the palace… rather, from now on you're forbidden from leaving this room, understood?" Luka felt, even if just mentally, a new chain wrapping around his body, tying him forever to the new order, and closed his eyes. In the end, he obtained exactly what he had hoped to avoid with every fiber of his being.<br>Sodom was the first thing he thought of. He would never see him again, now that the order had been given. A sharp pain tore at his chest, much deeper than what his master's nails had caused.  
>The king, meanwhile, tightened his grip on Luka's hair and passed his tongue over his Zess' ear.<br>"You'll stay here with me, Luka," he whispered, "but remember: you're my favourite," Lucifer's hand grabbed the young man's chin, compelling the silvery eyes to look in his crimson ones, "but if you ever betray me, I'll cut you to pieces as big as a man's nail without thinking twice."  
>Luka couldn't do anything except keep still in the face of that threat, but Lucifer wasn't interested in receiving answers.<br>Smiling, the demon king got into bed and on Luka.  
>"And now you'd better not move."<p>

_[__An old man by a seashore,_

_at the end of day,_

_gazes the horizon_

_with seawinds in his face._

_Tempest-tossed island,_

_seasons all the same,_

_anchorage unpainted_

_and a ship without a name.__]_

Luka had persuaded himself to be strong.

That week, Lucifer provided him with an abundant evidence of how foolish that idea of his had been.

_[__Sea without a shore for the banished one unheard._

_He lightens the beacon light at the end of world_

_showing the way, lighting hope in their hearts,_

_the ones on their travels homeward from afar.__]_

"Kyuuuuu…"  
>Takashiro paused in the doorway and crossed his arms, taking the last moment to consider his decision.<br>Yuki sat in a small armchair, in front of a petite table, on which an untouched cup of tea had already stopped steaming, and was slowly caressing the head of that little black pet she had brought with her. The creature was whimpering, watching her desperately and holding out its slight paws to her fingers to shake her from her stupor.  
>Takashiro looked at her a bit longer before knocking on the jamb gently.<br>Yuki gave a jerk and raised her widened eyes on him. Recognizing him, the young girl attempted a smile, but the falseness of that gesture was so apparent that the head of the Giou clan cocked an eyebrow with scepticism.  
>Takashiro came near, while Yuki sighed.<br>"I'm not a good company today", she warned him sotto voce, evidently tired. "Do the Zweilts need me?"  
>Takashiro smiled ruefully, shaking his head at her speculation.<br>"I come to you for this purpose only, don't I?" he bitterly commented.  
>That was the truth. The Light of God's purity was absolute, it would have made everyone feel better, regardless of the sort of pain, but he carried a Duras inside, and he didn't deserve any relief, so he avoided getting near her.<br>Yuki glanced at him with sincere kindness, as if aware of his thoughts.  
>"That's why I exist", she reminded him as if it stating the obvious, quiet in her resignation.<br>Takashiro didn't dare to retort. That, sadly, was the cruelest and truest reality of facts, and it hurt him, after so many lives, to know he was the only one guilty of that. But he would try to remedy the situation, at least once and in small ways.  
>"May I?" he asked, pointing to the chair and, when she nodded, he sat down with a sigh. He thought for a moment, doubtful, but then he made up his mind. "Do you remember what state you had been in before you vanished?"<br>Yuki stiffened.  
>"No questions", she reminded him seriously, but he smiled.<br>"I'm not asking even one", he assured, "I'm just trying to make you understand."  
>"There's nothing I have to understand, I…"<br>"You were dying", he interrupted her, raising his voice a little to draw her attention.  
>Yuki paused. She bit her lower lip and bowed her head before murmuring a soft "I know…"<br>Takashiro sighed.  
>"Princess, for a moment during this chat, let me pretend you're just Yuki, may I?"<br>Yuki was surprised – it was the first time Takashiro made such a request, so she nodded.  
>"Yuki", Takashiro took her hand in his, making Sodom mutter briefly, and continued in a serious tone, "four weeks ago I was ready to prepare your funeral. I promised you I would not question you, and I won't, but I can't help seeing, can you understand? I don't know what you were doing during those three weeks, but I see you're still alive. Don't misinterpret me, I'm happy about it, but it's something really close to a miracle, and I haven't seen a lot of them recently. Whatever happened, Yuki, I'm thankful for it, really. I just can't understand why a young girl, both beautiful and smart, might be so sad after escaping the death everyone had thought imminent."<br>Yuki turned her head away, averting her gaze.  
>She didn't need Takashiro's lecture to know she was being ungrateful, she was fully aware of it, but she couldn't help spending every second asking herself how Luka was doing. He was a demon, true, but he saved her and protected her, and now he was in hand of someone, who would hurt him because of her scent. She was ungrateful because of not being happy simply to be home; she was ungrateful because of repaying Luka with just a goodbye, and she was ungrateful because of letting him suffer who knows what without lifting a finger.<br>"What would you have me do?" she asked in a cracked voice, removing her hand from the man's grip to dry her own tears without having to let Sodom go. "Do you want me to walk here and there, bouncing happily and giving away flowers? Sorry, but I'm really not in the mood…"  
>"I see," Takashiro murmured, frowning, "so I'm here to listen to you, if you want to explain to me what's troubling you."<br>Yuki gave a short and bitter laugh.  
>"I'm not joking, Yuki", the man admonished her, quiet earnest. "Whatever it is, if it's related to your return and recovery, then I'll do everything in my power to make it right again. You just have to tell me, and I'll take care of it."<br>Yuki was ready to decline the offer, but those last words roused an instinct in her. Was there a chance looming on the horizon? Takashiro, after all, had a Duras inside him, he couldn't mind a lot, could he? She bit her lower lip.  
>"I am troubled because the Duras, who saved me, is in danger… I think."<br>Yuki's respect for Takashiro increased, when she saw that the man wasn't panicking. Nor getting caught up in a bout of hysteria.  
>"It's ok", he sighed in a moment, reclining fully in his armchair and looking at her solemnly. "Tell me everything from start to finish."<p>

_[__This is for long-forgotten_

_light at the end of the world._

_Horizon crying_

_the tears he left behind long ago.__]_

Takashiro sighed and ran a hand over his face for the umpteenth time since that time, the night before, when Yuki told him what happened to her during the three weeks of her absence.  
>A part of him was sure she had definitely gone mad; the other part was more than sure that he was the one who had gone mad.<br>When Yuki described the demon, who saved her, Takashiro instantly realized, who he was: pitch black hair, silvery eyes, a translucent skin, fangs and supernatural beauty. He was the Duras, who attacked Hotsuma and Shusei a short while before the fight against Cadenza, doubtlessly.  
>"The one loved by the demon king", he murmured, looking at the moon outside the window and repeating what he had discovered about that strange Luka Crosszeria thanks to the prophetic rituals. "Magical powers that surpass those of the rest ones; cold-hearted and ruthless; his eyes are blades, and his hair is the night itself. His shape and form are frightening and yet beautiful."<br>And deep sadness, Yuki would have added. She insisted strongly on that point and on the love the demon was able to show to his familiar. Those were two conflicting versions of the same story, two portraits of the same person, drawn by different artists, and so he had to choose, which one to trust.  
>A light knocking on the door made him turn, but before he could answer his princess had already let herself in.<br>Yuki stared at him with determination.  
>"Is it ready?" she asked.<br>Actually, rituals could go straight to hell - he would always trust Yuki the most.  
>With a sigh, he pointed to the spell on his desk, and allowed Yuki to come near to take it.<br>It looked like a piece of parchment, rectangular in shape and a little bigger than the girl's hand. On its surface there was a drawing of a strange pentacle and an incomprehensible inscription, made in a scary red ink.  
>"Burn it, and it will bring you to that Luka of yours", Takashiro assured her, his expression dark, "but at your first wound, however insignificant it might be, you'll come back. For me, it doesn't matter, if it's nothing serious – if you just stumble and hurt your knee, or if you prick your finger with a splinter of glass; it doesn't matter, if you've found your demon or not yet: at your first wound, you'll return straight here, and I'm not willing to negotiate this point." The girl had already managed to obtain permission to go alone, without any escort, either of the Zweilts or of that little furball, but Takashiro wouldn't have risked his pupil to any greater extent for the sake of some demon of a dubious loyalty.<br>Yuki glanced at him.  
>"I'll be careful to not stumble", she replied before turning and moving off.<br>Takashiro watched her go for a moment longer, and then he sighed.  
>Whatever would happen, something was telling him that night would definitely change everybody's lives. The present and the future ones.<p>

_[__The albatross is flying_

_making him daydream_

_the time before he became_

_one of the world's unseen._

_Princess in the tower,_

_children in the fields:_

_life gave him it all,_

_an island of the universe.__]_

Yuki waited till midnight, as Takashiro had taught her, and when the time came, she held out the spell toward the candle she had lighted, while raising her eyes to the sky.  
>The scary red moon stared back at her.<br>Walpurgis Night. Yuki nodded to herself, recognizing why Takashiro had asked her to wait a day longer before leaving, - to wait till the moment, when the curtain between the two worlds was thinner.  
>Suddenly, she sensed the fire heat really close to her fingers, but she didn't make it in time to lower her gaze to see the spell finish burning. Her eyes went wide, when everything became black for a second, everything but the moon. While the red disc stayed the same, the rest of the surroundings had changed instantly.<br>Yuki found herself on her knees on the floor, no more in her room, but in a long corridor, constructed of black stones, her face to a lateral wall, consisting completely of windows, where fragments of red and black glass were embedded like cuts and wounds in the flesh. Yuki shivered and looked around only to discover there was just one door, at the end of the corridor at her left. If the spell had to have taken her to Luka, then there was no other option.  
>Without losing any time, for fear of being sensed and found, Yuki shot up and headed for the door. She paused for a moment, glancing around, in order to put her ear to the wooden surface in an attempt to hear any casual voices, but the silence was absolute, so she recollected her courage and half-opened the door-wing.<br>In the room, there was an enormous four-poster bed, with red sheets and a black blanket and pillows; its headboard faced the left wall, on either side of the bed there was a closed door. The wall in front of the entrance and the one at its right were composed of stained glass; the floor and other walls were covered in night-black stones. Some candles kept a small area near the bed lighted and made a heap of slackly lying chains on the ground glow tremulously.  
>The opening of the door hadn't produced any sound, however, some figure immediately moved. Yuki was on the edge of crying out, but restrained herself just in time.<br>Luka, naked, had slipped rapidly out of the shadow in the right corner at the end of the room and let himself drop to his knees elegantly in the middle of the chamber at the bed-foot. He hadn't raised his eyes to the visitor, not even for a moment; he kept his head bowed, and that submissive behaviour alone would have shocked Yuki, used to see him strong and determined, if it hadn't been for the state of his body.  
>Ten wounds, clearly healed a little, crossed his chest, the five of those going from his right shoulder to his left side and the other five mirroring them to create a jagged 'X' on his torso. Multiple cuts and welts broke his flanks muscles and let surmise that the condition of his back had to be even worse than the one of his chest. His arms were covered in purple and black bruises, and his wrists showed wounds, which coiled round them like bracelets – probably some memories from a period in chains. Yuki didn't manage to see his face, but she hoped it had been spared, because it was the only thing, which gave him a little value in the eyes of his master, if one could believe what Takashiro had told her.<br>"Luka?" she called softly.  
>Luka stiffened. It was one of his master's cheating tricks, he was sure about it; Lucifer had to be testing him to see, if he was still attached to the woman, with whom he had almost betrayed the demon king, and to check, if he truly didn't wish to sleep with her. Yes, it was so, Yuki couldn't be …<br>"LUKA!"  
>Luka didn't even register the pain, when she threw herself on her knees in front of him and then on him to hug him tightly, - he was too surprised to pay attention to his body's lamentation. In a moment, his chest sent to him the sensation of small hot drops, falling onto his skin, while the girl's warm body, which was holding him, increased the grip and started trembling a bit.<br>Only once in his whole life Luka had experienced the feeling he was having at that moment. And that could mean just one thing.  
>"No!" He jumped to his feet, shocked, and took a couple of steps back. Horrified, he saw the girl raise her gaze, and that gesture, indeed, revealed Yuki's face. Luka was on the edge of cursing aloud, but then he realized how pale and shaky she was, and restrained himself. In a second, he got a sense of being naked, and when that realization came, he felt deep mortification.<br>He turned away and materialized trousers on himself, while grabbing a shirt from the floor and putting it on swiftly, not daring to turn again to face her. His nudity had been imposed on him by his master, and he had stopped feeling ashamed in front of him because there was nothing left of his body that Lucifer hadn't already touched and infected. But letting Yuki see him like that, see the marks he carried and the proofs of what he had become during that week – more of a whore than a warrior – it was quite a different story. He hated the very idea, and the bile burned his throat at the thought that it was already too late to avoid it. And she was the current guardian of his familiar, too.  
>"Don't tell Sodom…" he heard himself whisper. "I pray, don't tell Sodom…"<br>Yuki didn't even consider answering such a request. Even if Luka had had a say in the matter and, instead of being forced, had chosen voluntarily to accept those compromises his body spoke of, she would have never dared to judge him; and, even more surely, she would have never told such things to the little dragon. However, her mind paused in order to process two cursory images, caught by her eyes before he could have totally covered himself and turned his back to her. The first one: his face was still beautiful, but disfigured by a big purple bruise, which spread over the whole left part of his face, covering his cheekbone, eye and nose, as well as numerous abrasions and bite marks on his lips. The second one: his back was criss-crossed with deep slashes from violent claws, certainly not due to an honest mistake, made in a fit of passion, but clearly willingly inflicted for the mere purpose of causing as much pain as possible.  
>Yuki was so lost in what she had observed that she needed a moment to recognize Luka's discomfort.<br>For Luka, proud as he was, it had to be a terrible humiliation to be seen in that condition…  
>Yuki got up, her white dress streaked with black dust and red stains, which she hadn't noticed before, and came to Luka from behind, while he was still fighting with his shirt buttons because of an unforeseen trembling in his hands and repeating his plea to keep the matter a secret from Sodom.<br>The girl's thin arms wrapped around the demon's waist, slowly and carefully, as if for fear of hurting him with that simple gesture of kindness, and then she leaned her forehead lightly unto the hollow of his spinal column, between his shoulder-blades.  
>"It's all right", she murmured in a low voice, tightening her embrace a little, when she felt the Duras stiffen. "It will be all right, Luka. Because I'm with you."<br>Luka turned his head a bit, not daring to move his body, and peeked at the slight figure of her at his back. It was so… strange… to be hugged in that way, in a gesture, which wasn't asking anything, but, instead, trying to give something. The Duras felt his skin warm little by little in contact with her frame, and, for some absurd and foolish reason, his mind calmed down and, without questioning, accepted that offer, which it would have undoubtedly refused, if only it had been a little wiser.  
>Luka threw back his head, staring at the ceiling silently, but he didn't try to break free from her embrace.<br>"How have you got here?"  
>Yuki tightened her hug a little more.<p>

"I've come to take you away", she whispered, ignoring the inquiry.

Luka felt a wave of something, some warm emotion in his chest, flood him, and for a moment he closed his eyes and let himself be carried by it, sighing. Then he heard it.  
>Yuki had to step back because of Luka's sharp turn, but he gave her no time to ask about anything. The Duras grabbed her by her waist, dragged her to the door on the right side of the bed, the one farther from the entrance, and pushed her in what she discovered to be a big bathroom with an enormous bathtub, as large as a double bed. Confused, when Luka closed the door, leaving her inside, she bended to spy through the keyhole.<br>To her great shock, Luka returned to his position, kneeling in front of the bed, head bowed, and in a second, the door opened.  
>Cadenza came in calmly, his long red hair loose and a little smile on his lips. He came near until he was a mere inch away from Luka.<br>"Who knows why, I was sure I'd find you here…" he laughed, and the Zess clenched his fists, but didn't move.  
>"What are you doing here?" he asked evenly.<br>To Yuki's big dismay, the demon kicked Luka in the stomach. The black-haired demon leaned forward with a hiss, but otherwise he didn't react.  
>"Nothing, being honest", the redhead Duras admitted then, shrugging. "I just wanted to say hello…"<br>Yuki, weeping in the face of Cadenza's cruel entertainment, pressed her hands over her own mouth not to be heard outside. Luka, in turn, growled something in warning, but as soon as he raised his head, baring his teeth, the chains on the floor moved instantly and entwined his body viciously.  
>The Zess gritted his teeth, furious, while the metal started scorching his flesh. Normally, Luka would have kept his head high and challenged Cadenza, taking advantage of his master absence, but Yuki's presence and the certainty that she wouldn't be able not to intervene, watching anyone suffer, made him put his pride aside.<br>Feeling shame boiling inside, Luka slowly bowed his head again, and the chains slipped down from his frame to fall on the ground with light jingling.  
>Cadenza laughed and grabbed the hair on the top of Luka's skull to push his head even lower, close to his feet.<br>"How I love to see you like this!" he laughed again, taunting the other demon.  
>Luka clenched his fists even tighter, hurting his palms with his own nails, but forced himself not to move.<br>Cadenza relished his victory a moment longer, before relaxing his grip, turning and leaving the room, still laughing.  
>As soon as his steps died away in the corridor, Yuki ran out of her hiding place to kneel beside Luka. The Duras was pressing his hand to his stomach, but still he kept his frozen expression oh his face.<br>"You have to go", he ordered through his teeth. "Now, before they find you."  
>Yuki stared at him for a moment, then she shook his head vigorously.<br>"You are coming with me", she declared, "I won't leave you here after…"  
>"I have a Contract, Yuki!" Luka growled, making her jerk. Noticing her fear, the Zess made himself turn his head and soften his voice. "I can't disobey, and I've been ordered not to leave this room. However, even if I were able to get out, it would be enough for him to call me back to force me to return. I can't escape."<br>Yuki hesitated and bit her lower lip.  
>"There has to be a way to terminate the Contract, doesn't it?" she asked in a low voice.<br>Luka laughed acrimoniously.  
>"Yes, it will be enough, if my master sets me free. What do you think: will he do it, if I say 'pretty please'?"<p>

_[__Now his love's a memory,_

_a ghost in the fog._

_He sets the sails one last time_

_saying farewell to the world._

_Anchor to the water,_

_seaweed far below,_

_grass still in his feet_

_and a smile beneath his brow.__]_

Cadenza entered the hall and bowed deeply before the throne.  
>"So what?" the king asked, limply stretched out against the backrest, his head reclined upon his hand. "Didn't I tell you to bring the intruder to me?"<br>"I don't think "he" is here to kill you, your majesty", Cadenza answered.  
>"Then, what for? I sense him, Cadenza: he's in my rooms."<br>"But you are not the only one to look for in your rooms." Cadenza raised his head to meet the blood-coloured eyes of his master. "Your room is permeated with the scent Luka had on him after his jaunt in the human realm."  
>Lucifer's expression hardened and became frosty, but his eyes shone threateningly.<br>"He?" he asked.  
>"When I came in, he pretended there was nobody else there."<br>"Can it be that he didn't notice?"  
>"Even his body was wearing that woman's scent."<br>Lucifer closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he smiled. He stood up and, with a gesture toward the Opast General, ordered the demon to follow him.  
>"Luka's mine, Cadenza," he said, "I have no intention of sharing him with anyone. But if you want, you may have his woman."<br>The redhead man sneered, imagining Luka's reaction as he would go to bed with the girl the other Duras was infatuated with.  
>"Gladly, my king."<p>

_[__This is for long-forgotten_

_light at the end of the world._

_Horizon crying_

_the tears he left behind long ago._

_(…so long ago…)__]_

Yuki ignored Luka's sarcasm.  
>"Apart from that?" she asked again.<br>He shrugged.  
>"The only possibility is for a more powerful master to claim me, too. But I have a blood mark that identifies me as my master's favourite, and there's not so many people stronger than the demon king…" he explained. He read in Yuki's expression what she was going to say and preempted it. "A Duras' power increases with killings he commits. I may have killed a lot of people, but on Walpurgis Night's Eve, every year, he personally murders fifteen Zess. Do you have any idea what kind of power he has now? And this year's massacre happened only yesterday."<br>Yuki went white at the mere thought of such a ritual carnage, but she forced herself to stay focused.  
>"And an invocator's powers?" she asked. "Takashiro's a really powerful necromancer, maybe he…"<br>"Nobody, Yuki", Luka interrupted her, really serious and getting more and more anxious. "And now get out."  
>Yuki was on the edge of arguing, but she got overtaken.<br>"Come on, Luka!" Lucifer declared, his fake smile full of rage as he entered the room with Cadenza in tow. "Your fiancée has just arrived; you can't possibly want to send her away immediately!"  
>Luka moved instinctively, without reasoning, as he sprang to his feet, pushing Yuki away from him, towards the bed, which, he hoped, would provide at least a minimum protection for her. However, he didn't make it in time to get near the men of even just a step closer to them before the chains attacked him again, that time crushing him savagely. He threw back his head, mouth opened in a mute scream, and arched his back, while his arms got blocked behind his waist and the scorching iron brought him to his feet, twining around his throat.<br>When he could open his eyes, he found Cadenza holding Yuki from behind, her arms in his clutch, as he continued laughing. Instinctively, Luke gave a tug in their direction to stop him, but his master grabbed the chain, looped around his neck, and pulled the Duras to him.  
>"When have you become so stupid, Luka?!" Lucifer hissed in his face nastily before throwing him against the single pillar between the windows of the right wall.<br>_It's not fair…  
><em>Luka hurtled into the stone with his side, his left temple crashed against the rough surface, opening a new cut on his forehead, and he staggered for a second, but before he could fall down, Lucifer grabbed him by the hair.  
><em>It's not fair… He can't defend himself… If he were free, you wouldn't dare touch him…<br>_Lucifer tightened his grip on Luka's tresses even more, and then he slammed his head against the wall the second time. And the third. And the fourth.  
><em>You haven't got the courage to fight honestly with him… You're cowards…<br>_"YOU. BELONG. TO. ME! How many times do I have to repeat this to you? You're mine! Every strand of hair and every drop of blood, understood?! You're mine! MINE!"  
><em>Wimps, let him go… It's not fair, in such a way… It's not fair… Enough…<br>_"Do you think you can do what you want?!" The demon king kept banging Luka's head against the wall, and red rivulets were already running down Zess' face. "You're MINE! When I am finished with her, you'll realize it! You don't betray me, understood?! NOBODY betrays me!"  
><em>Enough… Let him go… Enough… Enough…<br>_"ENOUGH!"  
>Luka was expecting the umpteenth outburst of anguish in his head; instead, an intense light flooded the room. Someone, maybe Cadenza, roared with pain, while all the windows shattered. Luka turned, bemused, and saw the redhead man stepping back with his hands covering his eyes. Even Lucifer had brought up one arm to shield his face, and that weakness of his shocked Luka so much that he needed a moment to realize the windows weren't the ones shattered.<br>His master's subduing chains were piled on the floor, helpless and rapidly turning into dust.  
>"Luka!"<br>Yuki rushed to him. Swift and persistent, the darkness returned as soon as the source of light was out, but little sparkles, like fireflies or tiny stars, were still lingering and floating around the room for some seconds. The seconds, Luka realized, he had to take advantage of.  
>Calling upon all the strength left in him, Luka leaped forward. He snatched Yuki's arm and dragged her along until they got into his master's tremendous bathroom; then he locked the door.<br>"This won't hold them back", he panted, turning sharply, but the abrupt movement made his head swim, bringing him to his knees.  
>"Stop it!" Yuki ordered him, kneeling beside him in concern. "Let me see…"<br>Luka pushed her hands away from his head, grasping her by her wrists.  
>"Get out of here!" he insisted conclusively. "They'll soon get in and then…"<br>"I won't leave you here like this!" she refused, shaking her head energetically.  
>"Damn it, Yuki, I have a…!"<br>Luka's retort got cut off in the middle, when he remembered. The Contract chains had vanished. What the hell...?!  
>Yuki smiled sweetly.<br>"I told you there had to be a way…" she reminded him.  
>Luka didn't know what to say. However, he didn't have time to open his mouth.<br>A thud came from the door, followed by Lucifer's enraged growl.  
>Without thinking, Luka drew on his powers and put a seal on the door. A purple pentacle, inscribed into a circle, began to glow idly on the wood. It wouldn't withstand the pressure for long, but it was better than nothing.<br>"Luka, I won't leave you here! Not now that you can escape: this is probably the only chance you'll ever have to get free!"  
>The Zess looked at her and felt a wave of tenderness warm him from inside. It was a feeling not so different from the one he felt, when Sodom simplified the whole universe in a <em>'Sodom loves his Master!<em>'. Yuki lived in a world, which was different from his, a wholly white world, where everyone could redeem themselves. She didn't understand and would never understand what it meant to be born a slave, to have lived as a slave for more than four hundreds years. Being a Zess was something, from which it wasn't possible to escape; which was burned into your flesh since birth with the two crosses; and which nobody would ever let you forget; something, not even her magic would be able to change.  
>But he was grateful for that kindness and her innocence. Those made it easier to accept the idea of throwing away his only chance for freedom.<br>Luka turned his back to the door to stand between it and Yuki and strove to draw himself straight. He stared in those amber eyes for a moment, then he nodded to himself.  
>He would die on that day, for Lucifer would never let him leave Infernus alive, but he wouldn't die as the king's slave, not like that.<br>Right hand on his heart, left fist knuckles on the floor; left leg bended, right knee on the ground.  
>"<em>From this day on, for the eternity of times, I swear to you: my life will be your shield, and my body will be your sword. Until the day I die, I promise my soul will be your property. All of me is yours. From this day on, for the eternity of times, I swear it to you, my lady and mistress.<em>"  
>Yuki's eyes grew wide, when a shining white chain wrapped around Luka's throat as a collar, while its other end shot out to her right wrist. There it hovered, as if in waiting, and Yuki realized she had to make her choice.<br>It wasn't what she wanted. She didn't dare to say she understood what Luka had suffered through – her situation was immeasurably better than his, but she wanted to liberate him all the same. She wanted him to be free, not simply to change one master for another. However, the condition of Takashiro's spell sprang to her mind, pushing her to chose.  
>"I accept your loyalty, <em>from this day on, for the eternity of times<em>.", she declared. The chain coiled carefully round her wrist, as a bracelet and for a moment flashed brighter before vanishing into nothingness. Yuki knelt in front of Luka and looked him in the eye. "And I swear to you I'll take you away from here."

Luka was surprised and a bit irritated by her stubbornness, but before he could say something to distract her from her idiotic and suicidal intent, as always, when he was trying to argue with that girl, he got deprived of the opportunity to talk.  
>The seal on the door exploded, and Lucifer's claws opened furrows in the wood, making some splinters drop on the kneeling pair.<br>"Off with you!" Luka ordered, lifting Yuki by force to shove her to the opposite wall.  
>"Luka..!" Yuki tried, but at that moment the door was torn down from its hinges.<br>Luka growled and lunged at Lucifer as soon as his former master crossed the threshold. The demon king snarled even louder and pushed Luka back-first against the jamb, consequently blocking Cadenza's path, too.  
>"BETRAYER!" he shouted, furious, upon realizing he hadn't made it in time to prevent his slave from binding himself to the girl.<br>Luka bared his teeth.  
>"Just for you!" he retorted, kneeing the demon lord to the stomach.<br>Lucifer roared. His eyes blazed, becoming even more red. He managed to grab Luka by his bangs and, as if immune to the punches the Zess was giving him to shake him off, threw himself at the young man.  
>Luka cried out, when Lucifer's teeth sank into his neck. He gasped, his hands frantic and head forced back, while his ex-master drank from him with growing impetus, and in a flash of lucidity Luka understood the demon was willing to sap him to death. By mere instinct, he raised his hand to pluck Lucifer by the hair, to no avail, and then he reached out behind his back, feeling for whatever could help him.<br>His fingers curled round the scalding hot glass of an oil lamp, hung on the wall.  
>With a rebellious scream, he tore the object from its hook and smashed it against Lucifer's face as best as he could.<br>The hell king stepped back with a bellow. Half his face was wet with fuel oil and burning; in a second, the demon's clothes and hair caught flame, too.  
>Luka stared at the scene in shock, unable to realize what he had done, even as he watched Cadenza dash to his king.<br>Lucifer fell to the ground, screaming in pain.  
>Someone seized Luka's arm and pulled him to the bathtub.<br>Cadenza started knocking down flame with the blanket from his king's body, already engulfed in fire.  
>Yuki appeared before Luka and bent down to pick a shard of glass from the floor.<br>Lucifer rolled on the floor, trying to extinguish the flame, but he stopped, when he saw his former slave.  
>Yuki cut her palm and let the blood drip.<br>Lucifer's healthy eye, red as Infernus moon, stared at Luka with hatred and madness, while the king growled and roared with pain and fury.  
>Then shadows swirled all-around, and Luka's stomach shrank into itself.<br>He blinked, and suddenly he was in another bedroom. The room he had already seen, but just once. Yuki stared at him silently, still standing before him and waiting for something unknown to him.  
>Luka sank to the floor; everything around him suddenly grew much taller, and something hurt his back. While he was asking himself, why the ceiling was in front of him, he noticed an open window on his left.<br>In the blue sky a red moon was glistening.  
>Then all turned black.<p>

_[__This is for long-forgotten_

_light at the end of the world._

_Horizon crying_

_the tears he left behind so long ago._

_(…so long ago…)__]_

* * *

><p><strong><em>Song: "The Islander" by Nightwish.<em>**

* * *

><p><strong><em>And now I can say it: THANKS! To Linda-Nairika, my beta, for correcting all my horrible mistakes in this and in the former chapters. I'm really glad you chose to help me! :D<em>**

**_That said, let's speak about the chapter..._**

**_There's a dialogue between Yuki and Luka where she told him "It's alright..." and so on: I took it completly from the manga, so it's not mine..._**

**_About the Contract, this is how I imagine Luka got free from Lucifer and tied himself to Yuki :)_**

**_Nothing more. I'm working to sixth chapter so I hope it will be ready soon by I'm not sure when..._**

**_Thanks to all who read, really._**

**_See you soon,_**

**_Agap :)_**


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter VI_

**_LIKE A DREAM AT DAYBREAK_**

"…

_I will never betray you."_

Yuki carefully lifted Luka's torso, tightening her arm around his shoulders, and then she gently leaned him against her own frame, so that the young man's neck rested against her clavicle and his back stayed aside from her chest, leaving enough space for her fingers to work. Slowly, as if he was made of frail glass and about to break, she held out her hands to his chest from behind and made the shirt buttons slip from their buttonholes. She smiled sadly upon noticing that, in his haste, Luka had buttoned up crookedly. She gently manoeuvred his shoulders and arms to pull down the sleeves, and his body followed her gestures without resistance, limp and indolent, as if it was soulless.  
>Under the red moon's light, on Walpurgis Night, the crimson cross wounds on that snowy chest looked even worse than they actually were.<br>Yuki took some previously prepared pieces of gauze, soaked in the disinfectant, from the bowl on her bedside table and began dabbing carefully at all the scratches she saw, without moving from the position she was in. She felt Luka's really light breath against her neck, where his face was nestled, and she counted the passing time by its rhythm, silently. Having finished with the disinfection, she took the bandages and began wrapping them round Zess' torso until covering it almost entirely; then she clasped his shoulders again and hefted him a bit to slip away from under him.  
>She got up from the soft mattress and cautiously guided Luka's unconscious body with her hands to descend onto the sheets, making him carefully lay down his abused head on the pillow. She moved his night-black locks away from his forehead with her fingertips only, afraid of disturbing that peaceful sleep; and then she took another set of gauze and cleaned multiple wounds on his temple and on the side of his head as well as cuts and bite marks on his lips. A circle made of bandages enfolded even Luka's head, and by that time the paleness of his naturally fair skin had been standing out even more in the shadow of the dark room, where the candles had already went out long before.<br>In the semi-gloom, but moving with precision, Yuki carefully extracted the shards of glass from Luka's right palm, spread some aloe sap over the burns, although unsure about its effect on a demon, and then bandaged the hand with care, too.  
>When she had finished treating all Luka's wounds, she paused for a moment to look at him. Motionless and senseless, helpless and alone on the most dangerous night of the year, a fugitive, masterless and homeless, who still maintained an air of might and beauty, daunting and determined, strong even in his sleep, induced by the suffered injuries. So she slowly knelt at the side of her own bed, now occupied by the young man, and reached out with her hands to hold the big, bandaged and abandoned one of his, then she bowed her head and began crying silently for his soul's scars, not even her powers would ever be able to heal.<p>

_[__A te che sei l'unica al mondo,_

_l'unica ragione per arrivare fino in fondo _

_ad ogni mio respiro:_

_quando ti guardo _

_dopo un giorno pieno di parole,_

_senza che tu mi dica niente _

_tutto si fa chiaro.__]_

In the course of centuries, Luka had learned to study the situation with his most undetectable senses before opening the eyes, when he woke up.  
>He felt a mattress under his back and sheets at his waist; his body was naked, and every square inch of it was sending stabs of pain to him. A shiver ran down his spine, while contrasting feelings grew inside him.<br>Bed, nakedness and pain could mean only one thing: he was still at his master's, and the confusing images he believed he remembered, red with flames and blood, were noting more than bundled oddities of an evanescent dream. A part of him was relieved because of that: it meant that Yuki had never seen him in such a poor and pathetic state and that her nightmares would never be filled with Lucifer's face. But his other part was disappointed and hurt. In spite of himself, the idea of Yuki – little, pure and naïve Yuki – being so worried for him as to come to Infernus to find him had pleased him: it had seemed, as if he had not been merely someone's property, but a person. Not to mention the satisfaction of hitting Lucifer he had felt in his dream…  
>Luka sighed, conscious that none of his dreams had ever changed his situation, and decided to open his eyes, ready – or almost – to face the umpteenth day of humiliations.<br>And he found a little black furball with two lively yellow eyes and a red gem in the centre of his forehead staring at him, motionless.  
>Before Luka could react, his familiar let out his loudest and most offended whistle, almost a screech, and then he threw himself to his face, grabbing his right cheek with his paws, and started rubbing his muzzle against it, applying occasional licks to his skin.<br>Luka realized.  
>"…Sodom?!" he murmured, shocked, but when he reached his hand out toward his familiar to pick him up, the little dragon vigorously bit his fingers and stubbornly clung to his face, vibrating with warning growls – more similar to gargles – he had began emitting.<br>"He's really angry with you."  
>Zess raised his gaze to find Yuki's already well-known figure, dressed in a soft lavender-coloured dress, who was approaching him with a tray full of bandages and medications in her hands.<br>Only then Luka noticed that the room he was in was made not of black stones, but of grey ones; that the big windows on his left were transparent and let in the hot light of the shining and gentle sun; and that the bed he was in, despite being double, had neither canopy nor curtains, let alone ropes or chains, and the blankets and pillows were white and fresh.  
>"He's convinced", Yuki continued, sitting down on the edge of the bed on his left and leaving the tray on a big bed table, "that if he remains glued to you, your order to stay with me will get withdrawn and he again will be able to follow you. He said he didn't want to speak with you at all because you were mean, but I'm sure he adores you."<br>Luka blinked a couple of times, baffled, then he tried to mentally reach Sodom.  
><em>Hey?,<em> he tried.  
><em>Sodom don't speak with the Master!<em>, the answer came immediately. _Sodom am angry!_  
>Luka felt as if he were falling from great height, when he heard Sodom's voice in his head once more. It was only a week since the last time it happened, but it seemed a much bigger interval; he had never been separated from Sodom for so long and after having persuaded himself he wouldn't ever see him again…<br>Relief overwhelmed him and, unable to stop the urge, Luka found himself smiling. With both the corners of his mouth.  
><em>Sodom said I'm angry!<em>, the puppy muttered, moving away to sit on his chest and stare at him with an offended face.  
>Luka held out his hand and put out his index finger to his familiar to let him play with it, but Sodom crossed his paws and turned his head away not to look him in the eye, refusing that peace offering.<br>_I missed you really much, Sodom._, the Duras thought, filling his mind with all the tenderness he was capable of. Not so much, truly, but to Sodom, who knew him well, it was more than enough.  
>The little dragon squeaked and jerked, surprised by such an explicitly affectionate sentence, and turned to look at his master with a doubtful expression. Luka moved the tip of his index finger a little.<br>Sodom strove to resist, even Yuki, unaware of their dialogue, noticed it, but in the end it was too much for him. With a loud "Kyuuu!", he went for his master's finger, grabbing it with his paws and starting nibbling at it happily.  
>Luka burst out laughing, for the first time in his life, because he felt well, truly.<br>Yuki tried not to laugh, while she watched the two of them playing, like father and son, and didn't interfere. She let them have fun a bit longer, conscious that for both of them it had been difficult to stand the separation even for a short period of time; and only when Sodom rushed to Luka's face again, without giving much thought to the purple colour of its left side, she intervened.  
>The girl grabbed the little dragon by his wings just in time before he crashed against Luka's broken nose.<br>"Okay", she said, with a tone which suggested a slight reproach, "but now Master must have his bandages changed, and then he needs to rest." Sodom sneezed as a gesture of rebellion, and Yuki relaxed the grip on his wings so that he could float in front of her face. "Someone has left Sodom's pap in the other room and gone away. What about having a meal and at the same time guarding so that nobody came in, while your Master is healing?"  
>Sodom's little yellow eyes sparkled and with the rhythmical "Ky-uuu! Ky-uuu! Ky-uuuuuuuuuu!" the little dragon disappeared in the anteroom.<p>

Both Yuki and Luka smiled, but the Duras darkened, when she took the fresh bandages.  
>"Would you manage to sit up?" she asked him calmly. "Or do you prefer to eat something first?"<br>Luka wondered, whether he could just answer her, now that she was his mistress, or he should wait for her unequivocal permission; so he found himself with half-parted lips, about to say something, but voiceless. Yuki glanced at him with surprise, when he hadn't replied, inciting him with her look to say something, and Luka realized he was staring at her face, so he turned his eyes away instinctively. Lucifer hated it, when he dared to hold his gaze, if not at his explicit command: every time the king accused him of being disrespectful, so he imagined even Yuki would be annoyed.  
>God's Light stiffened for a moment, when Luka lowered his eyes, guessing the situation. It was exactly what she didn't want to happen – for the Duras to change because of their Contract. Shaking her head a bit, she forced herself to calm down.<br>She reached out with her hand and touched Luka's healthy cheek lightly, in a soft invitation to look up at her face, and when he did, she she gave him such a sweet and bright smile, which could bring a roomful of people to their knees in awe and reverence.  
>"What have they done to you?" she asked him, her eyes and her voice full of a warm and kind feeling, which somehow spoke 'orange' to his senses, while her fingers moved some of his locks away from his forehead to see him better.. "Where's the warrior I know? He was really proud, you know? He didn't fully vail to anyone, including his master."<br>Luka wasn't sure how to interpret those phrases and what she meant to rouse in him, but he discovered his attention wasn't totally focused on her words.  
>For the first time in his life he found himself desiring, truly desiring someone, with such intensity that it made him feel ill. He wished he had the strength to finally close his mouth, erasing that idiotic expression from his face, and to raise himself upon an elbow and then up, and to return to being the warrior she had once seen, not a weak and pathetic ghost of himself; he wished he had the strength to hold out a hand towards her face and the courage to feel its warmth against his skin without running away from it; the courage to bring his lips close to hers to discover what flavour a desired kiss had, a gentle sentiment, which protected from winter and ice; he wished to discover, if her mouth tasted of honey and lilies and what it would be like to cover hers with his and to probe it with the tip of his tongue.<br>Then, eyes widened and blood frozen, he wished with every fibre of his being he had been still dreaming, because otherwise he would have to run to the other side of the planet to escape the shame for having effectively accomplished each of those actions.  
>Yuki's lips were soft, a little wet with her saliva, and tasted with honey and sunny days and forbidden dreams, which suddenly had come true. Her cheek was hot, flushed with embarrassment, but her big eyes were closed in a clear evidence of her trust.<br>Slowly, reluctantly, Luka pulled away from her.  
>Yuki needed a moment to open her eyes once more, and the Duras stopped breathing until then; but, when her eyelids trembled to rise, he lowered his gaze, directing it on his fists, clenched on the sheet.<p>

What had he done?! Why couldn't he keep his place just once in his life?!  
>He waited a little longer, silent, but after some minutes he wasn't able to stand it anymore, and he felt like having to say something or going mad.<br>"Mistress…" he started, but having no idea how to continue.  
>Her fingers in his hair and her crystal, even if a bit embarrassed, laugh stunned him so much that he raised his head to look at her.<br>Yuki had reddened, but she was smiling.  
>"I suppose someone won't take this well," she commented softly as she kept caressing his hair, "but I think that, for the first time in my whole life… I don't really care."<br>Luka smiled and half-parted his lips to say something, but he gave a jerk, when he heard loud knocking at the door of the next room, right in front of the bed, and a warning "Kyuuu!" coming from full-mouthed Sodom.  
>He stiffened for a moment, but then he suddenly grabbed the blanket hem and tried to get up, only to find Yuki's hand on his arm.<br>"Don't you dare try it!" she scolded him. "You're still too weak to get up."  
>Luka was astonished, almost shocked. His master had always boasted of him: he had displayed and showed him to others without giving his consent to anyone – except Cadenza – to have him, but despite that, Lucifer had never tolerated him staying close, when he was dealing with his Generals: Luka had had to be a mute ornament, barely visible in the dim light in a corner of the room, and woe to him, if he had happened to draw attention to himself, diverting it from his owner. Yuki, instead, seemed not to care about others - about what they would think, finding a Duras in her bed.<br>There was another knock at the door, and again it was Sodom, who answered, this time with a really threatening growl, considering that it came from a little black furball.  
>Luka looked at Yuki, but she gave him an unconcerned wave of her hand, while she started working with the contents of the tray.<br>"Don't worry", she told him. "That's just Takashiro, Giou's householder." She paused to throw back her head a little and to raise her voice, taking care to be heard even over the door to her rooms, "But I clearly told him that, unless there were an emergency, I wouldn't let him in until you are completely healed."  
>The knocking stopped, there was a low laugh and then steps getting away.<br>Luka was shocked.  
>"Does he know I'm here?" he asked slowly.<br>Yuki laughed, immersing a rag into a disturbing greenish gelatinous liquid.  
>"Whom did you believe to have helped me to put you onto the bed?" she asked, rhetorical, giving him a sweet smile. "You're a bit heavy for me, you know?"<br>Luka ignored the joke.  
>"I thought you said he were your householder…" he murmured, all the more confused.<br>Yuki shrugged, returning to watching the bandage, which was slowly absorbing her green concoction.  
>"Takashiro's stubborn, sometimes cold, but really understanding. He trusts me, and I trust you, so I imagine he'll continue checking on us for a while to reassure himself, but he won't stand over us."<br>Yuki smiled sadly, while reaching towards him to better accommodate the pillows behind his back. "Plus, at the end of the story, I'm… somewhat different. I'm not really a family member, not a Zweilt."  
>Yuki had moved around, while she was talking; she had reached out to the bed table and had taken the gauze and wringed it a bit; then, having taken off her sandals and staying barefoot, she sat down on the bed, her knees hugged by her arms, as if she were protecting herself from sudden cold. The bandage in her hand let a liquid drop slip on the sheet.<br>"Yuki?" Luka probed, but she hurried to give him a rueful smile.  
>"Being locked up isn't a big deal. It's not like I have ever had any freedom, in the first place." She tried to explain, shrugging, before giving him a significant gaze, "I know there is pain truly greater than this."<br>Luka kept silent. Yuki's confession hadn't come all that unexpected, even he had already understood the deep sadness the girl had been carrying with her.  
>When Yuki spoke again, after a long silent moment, she did it in her lowest voice.<br>"The most... painful thing is..." She hesitated, shook her head, looked at the demon and then lowered her eyes, uncertain and restless; but eventually she spoke again, "You know what, Luka? The most... The most painful thing is... being... _all alone_." She had breathed those words out in a whisper, as if terrified of their sound. But when she started talking again, it was as if his attentively listening silence had fractured some barrier inside her, and her fears were now pouring out in a flow, like a river that had destroyed a dam, weakened by a tiny crack. "It's knowing that no one truly sees me. It's scary, so scary, and so sad..."  
>Luka stared at her. Her dress consisted of a slightly darker purple gown, covered by a lavender overskirt, which merged onto a corset, coming up to her breast, banded in a black strip, while her arms were naked, with the exception of two thin lavender-coloured veil strips on her forearms. Two black bows were styled as flowers and posed on either side of her head. She seemed so small and fragile in such a big dress, that he felt the urgency to protect her, despite there were no dangers on the horizon.<br>Even he, all in all, had known the feeling before meeting Sodom, and he still remembered it well. That emptiness in the chest; the sensation that nothing in the world was related to him because he was a prisoner in a transparent bubble, seeing others, but unable to be seen; and being sick and collapsing without anyone, who would come to check on him; and being scared of the gloom behind his eyelids, knowing that no face would show up to break that darkness, when his eyes would be closed; and being deprived of all the senses – olfaction and sight and hearing, even taste and touch – without anything, which could interfere with that absolute nothingness. Yuki was right: it was something terrifying, something to be scared of.  
>Silent, he held out his hand to her cheek and put it, palm open, onto her warm face.<br>He wasn't sure he could sweep away all the fears of that frail girl, but, in her whole speech there was one fear he was sure he could defeat.  
>"I see you", he murmured, shrugging, in a tone which belied the intrinsic importance in that sentence, apparently separated from the rest of the topic. "Truly."<br>Yuki widened her eyes for a second, then she smiled, sweetly again, and briefly closed her eyelids and rested her entire face totally in his palm. But after a moment she was already knelt on the bed at his side and threateningly brandished a big piece of gauze, still soaked through with that green rubbish.  
>Luka dodged, making a face, but the girl laughed at his expression and simply drew a bit nearer - so that, keeping the patch between her index and middle fingers, she could start removing the bandages from his head with her other fingers.<br>It was at that moment that the Duras realized that he had been treated and that his chest and head, and even his left hand had been bandaged.  
>While Yuki gently dabbed the cuts on his forehead he stared at the dressings in silence.<br>"He'll be furious…" he reasoned after a moment, and his body instinctively shivered at the mere thought of such a wrath against him. If Lucifer ever put his hands on him again… Even after four centuries under his dominion, Luka couldn't imagine what the king would do to him.  
>"That's not a problem of yours."<br>Luka raised an intent stare to Yuki, when he heard her say such a thing.  
>"It was me, who wounded him…" he retorted.<br>Yuki turned her eyes from his work to direct her look to his irises.  
>"But he doesn't own you anymore", she reminded him, with such seriousness that he had rarely seen her exhibiting. "You were mine, when you attacked him, and you're still mine. If he wants someone to blame, then I'm waiting for him to come."<p>

Luka shook his head.  
>"You don't know, what you're talking about…" he murmured.<br>Yuki shrugged, in return.  
>"I don't know a lot of things; nevertheless, I'm still here", she replied. "What matters to me now is, if and how I can free you from the Contract with me without endangering you."<p>

_[__A te che mi hai trovato _

_all'angolo coi pugni chiusi,_

_con le mie spalle contro il muro,_

_pronto a difendermi._

_Con gli occhi bassi,_

_stavo in fila _

_con i disillusi:_

_tu mi hai raccolto come un gatto_

_e mi hai portato con te.__]_

The red moon looked matt through the Burgundy wine and translucent grey, like smoothly polished bone, while the usually black sky appeared now in dense and dark scarlet. But when the moon turned into a silvery orb, full of defiance, Lucifer smashed the chalice in his own palm.  
><em>Lousy bastard…<em>  
>He hissed, letting the shards fall on the ground, and that sound made Cadenza, aloof and hidden in the shadows by the left wall of the room, jerk.<br>Missing the direct object of his wrath, Lucifer had been dropping down on whoever had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even the General had been finding himself a victim of such a fury. Until he recalled the existence of someone, who would have drawn his master's rage to himself and even would have let it be vented completely far better than him.  
>After long and bloody hours, Luze lay now motionless, crouched in a heap on the floor right in the middle of the room, his clothes shredded but his body well dressed in bruises and blood.<br>Lucifer growled something, when his gaze fell on him again.  
>He couldn't tolerate his sight. The man was freaking identical to his brother, but those damned eyes of his seemed to be mocking Lucifer, as if having fun reminding him that the Duras was nothing more than a bad copy of his favourite puppet, right when the king was beginning to forget the other twin's escape. Each time the demon lord saw those irises, he remembered Luka's silvery ones, and his rage returned, even more violent. Luze had to have understood it eventually because it had already been a couple of hours as he had been keeping his eyelids obstinately closed, regardless of what had been happening around him.<br>Lucifer stared at him with disgust, his lips curled up and his teeth bared. Luze looked so similar to Luka that even he could have mistaken one for the other, but his former slave would have never closed his eyes till the very end; nay, he would have thrown them up to stare in the master's face with that damned rebellious expression of his.  
>"Bastard…" he hissed between his teeth for the umpteenth time.<br>Lucifer brought his hand, wet with the wine, to his cheek, but, instead of sensing the taut and translucent skin, his palm clashed against a cold and rigid bone.  
>Although his right eye was still able to see, half of the demon king's face got burned during the fight with Luka; so the man had cut his hair, wore gloves to cover his hands and had made a bones mask from some skulls to hide the burnt part of his face. Knowing he wouldn't be able to heal any of those wounds without scarring increased his anger even more.<br>"Cadenza!" he shouted.  
>The Opast General hurried to appear in front of the throne and to kneel before his king. Luze didn't move.<br>Lucifer had to admit that Crosszeria boy was stronger than he imagined him to be, at his birth; he had even survived as long as Luka.  
><em>Luka…<em>  
>To Luka he had given more than to anybody else, but, perhaps, that was because nobody else was equal to Luka. His beauty was something, which transcended the physical features; which manifested in his presence and deportment; something, which might be there in his eyes, since Luze didn't seem to possess it, despite his absolute semblance to his brother. Seeing Luka so handsome, Lucifer had established him near himself, to a greater degree than any other slave; the fact that Luka wasn't willing, had pushed the demon king to subject him to so numerous and so extreme tortures, both mental and physical, that, as the result, he had developed a hard-won ability to endure almost every pain and humiliation without surrendering; discovering, that the Zess could use magic – a skill that had been lost centuries before in the Crosszeria clan – had impelled Lucifer to let him live to see how much stronger he would become; and realizing, what an amazing unicum Luka was, had led the king to make the mistake of marking him with his own blood to tie him to himself. In the end, Luka had proved to be stronger than Lucifer had ever imagined. Much too strong.<br>"You know, what I want", the demon lord growled to the redhead man. "I'm not interested in 'how'; just bring him back here."  
>"Alive?" Cadenza asked, a little hesitant in agreeing.<br>"Obviously!" Lucifer roared, infuriated, setting off the rain of thunderbolts out of the windows.  
>Cadenza hastily bowed his head even deeper, and then, as fast as he could, he turned and got out of the room.<br>The demon king caressed his bones mask again.  
>Just like God's Light, Lucifer had some unique and carefully hidden limitation to his own powers: he couldn't heal injuries, inflicted on him by a blood kin. Being one of the original angels, fallen from Heaven and, as such, having no ancestry, he simply had to pay attention every time he slept with a woman to not leave around any inconvenient heirs, who could have endangered him.<br>And then he put his own blood in Luka's veins. At that time, he didn't think it could become a problem, while, in fact, the ritual had brought the Zess to his own level and made him his kinsman, in a way; and with that came the ability, purely hypothetical for the one under a Contract, of course, to give wounds his master would never be able to heal completely. Because of a retaliation law, of sorts, Lucifer could have healed all the wounds Zweilts had given to each other, and God's Light would have been able to heal the ones, Luka had left to him. But God's Light, pathetically naïve as she was, had taken his slave away and would have never accepted any exchange of that kind.  
><em>I wouldn't want it, anyway!<em>, Lucifer thought, enraged. _She… She took him… She has to pay…_  
>Yes, he would make her pay.<br>Mentally, he reached out to Cadenza, already on the edge of the human realm.  
><em>Bring the Light of God to me too, Cadenza. Bring them both to me. Alive.<em>  
>During all that, while Lucifer was day-dreaming about his violent follies, Luze stayed on the floor.<br>When the thunderbolts outside abated a bit, the Zess half-raised his eyelids, enough to get a blurred image of the room around him and to make out the demon king's figure, still sitting on the throne.  
>Luze had spoken to his own brother just a couple of times in his whole life, during some missions, and he couldn't say they knew each other. They didn't know anything about each other, and they didn't share anything but their blood and looks. Then, why? Why did it have to be him, who paid for his twin's sins? He was already serving the sentence for his ancestor's misdeed; why even for that, really, when he hadn't done anything wrong? He didn't know his brother any better than any other Zess or even any free demon! Did he have to stand the racket instead of him, just because the fate had decided they had to share the same face?<br>_I hope they'll catch you, Luka_., he thought, closing his eyes again, while indignation and rage grew in him together with a strong sense of betrayal, _I hope they'll catch you and make you pay for all this crap._

_[__A te io canto una canzone _

_perché non ho altro._

_Niente di meglio da offrirti _

_di tutto quello che ho._

_Prendi il mio tempo _

_e la magia _

_che con un solo salto _

_ci fa volare dentro all'aria _

_come bollicine.__]_

Luka frowned.  
>"Do you want to cancel the Contract?" he asked, uncomprehendingly.<br>Yuki stared at him with surprise, but answered unhesitatingly.  
>"I want you to be free. Is it so wrong?"<br>"If you terminate the Contract, then the previous one, with Lucifer, will come into force again, because of the blood seal", he automatically replied, but not really concentrating on what he was saying. He rose from the pillows a bit, enough to sit up, and grabbed Yuki's wrist gently with his fingers to stop her continuous activity of spreading the green rubbish over his face. "Why do you want me to be free?"  
>Luka's voice was seriously curious, like the one of a child's asking why the sky were blue, and because of that, Yuki couldn't keep herself from bursting out laughing so loudly that Sodom appeared in the door, though she didn't notice him.<br>Unaware of the familiar's presence, Yuki removed her hand from Luka's grip and, although blushing a bit, slowly and fondly caressed his face until she touched his lips with her fingers tips.  
>"Because you're important", she explained slowly before drawing away from him. "Not as a slave, but as a person."<br>Luka was still digesting what Yuki had told him so calmly and what, for him, was unbelievable, but his thinking was interrupted by Sodom, who threw himself in the room and, with a "Kiuuu!", which transformed into a "Master!" in mid-course, landed on the bed, while he was still changing into his human form.  
>"Master!" he exclaimed again, with an enormous smile, launching himself onto Luka's chest to hug him. "Master is happy!"<br>Yuki smiled at the face Luka made under the strength of Sodom's embrace, certainly excessive for a wounded man. In the end, all the three of them knew well that the little dragon, as it often happened, had hit the nail on the head.

_[__A te che sei,_

_semplicemente sei._

_Sostanza dei giorni miei,_

_sostanza dei giorni miei._

_A te che sei il mio grande amore _

_ed il mio amore grande._

_A te che hai preso la mia vita _

_e ne hai fatto molto di più._

_A te che hai dato senso al tempo _

_senza misurarlo._

_A te che sei il mio amore grande _

_ed il mio grande amore.__]_

Luka growled.  
>"No!"<br>Yuki gave him a dirty look, putting her hands on her hips.  
>"It's aloe, a medical plant, not a poison, Luka. Don't be such a baby!"<br>Luka sent an unfriendly glance to the slimy bright-green, full of filaments of… something… and really stinking jelly Yuki had put in his hand, in a glass.  
>"I have no intention of drinking this thing", he repeated. "Or of eating it. Damn, I can't even understand, if it's solid or liquid!"<br>"You don't have to decide what it is, you simply have to take it and then sleep a bit", Yuki retorted. "And I dare to make you notice that Sodom plays up less than you."  
>Luka stared at the superior expression Yuki had been directing at him for ten minutes already, then he growled again.<br>Yuki raised her eyes to Heaven and sighed loudly.  
>"You really are impossible!" she scolded him, turning and grabbing a mantle from over a chair. While she was putting that on, she turned to him again for another dirty look. "You'd better be finished by the time I am back."<br>Luka nearly sprang to his feet, when he connected her gestures to her words.  
>"Where are you going?" he asked, forgetting for a moment the rubbish in his hands.<br>Although Yuki didn't behave as a master with him, Luka could feel the bond between them. And even if he didn't sense it, he was beginning to fear he would have been worried for her all the same. In any case, he felt a sort of anxiety mixed with terrible helplessness, grabbing him by the throat at the mere thought of her going who-knew-where all alone. Come on, she was barely able to lift a tray, let alone defending herself! How could she think about wandering around without an escort?! Luka couldn't perceive the idea.  
>"Hold your horses, great warlord", she mocked him, with a slightly sweeter smile, while she approached him. To his enormous astonishment, she planted a kiss on his forehead. "I'm simply going to the gate to strengthen the Kekkai, since the Walpurgis Night had weakened it. I'll stay inside the barrier, recite a couple of incantations and come back: I'll be alright."<br>Luka wasn't so sure about it, he was nervous, but Yuki didn't let him speak.  
>"Instead, something really bad will happen to you, if you haven't drunk up this sap before my return!" she continued in a joking tone, while she moved to the door and then stepped out.<br>Luka found himself still, confined to bed, alone with Sodom, who, in his wolf form, was staring suspiciously at the green thing in the glass.  
>"Do you want to taste it?" the Duras asked, holding out the container and allowing him to sniff it.<br>Sodom suddenly sneezed, and the next moment he shook his head, making faces and smacking his tongue in sign of absolute rejection of that smelly rubbish.  
>"I agree", Luka muttered, staring at the concoction again, as if it were the most terrible enemy he had ever encountered. Yuki had to hate him more than Lucifer to torture him in that way.<br>Speaking about Yuki... The young man reached out with his mind to touch her aura. It was easy to recognize it: it was so white and bright that it could be compared to… a cow-sized target.  
>Luka sighed. Protecting her would be a really difficult work, the girl practically had 'Hit here, thanks' written on her forehead.<br>The Duras tensed at each aura he felt coming near his God's Light, and he relaxed only when they passed by and left her presence. Eventually, Yuki arrived at the barrier, and her aura shone even more, when she started casting spells. Luka growled between his clenched teeth, but he knew that was Yuki's duty, and he forced himself to accept it. To be more exact, he tried.  
>Sighing, the demon focused again on the green filth, which, as Yuki claimed, would help him – if it didn't kill him first, something he was not so sure about, – and closed his eyes. With a grimace, he brought the glass to his lips.<br>A piercing perceived sensation, as if not his own, crossed his brain painfully, making him widen his eyes. The glass fell from his hand, and the green goo spread over the sheets, when he put his fingers to his wounded head, which had started throbbing violently in response to his sense of danger.  
>Luka growled, when he understood it had been the Contract conveying to him the reading, which Yuki hadn't decoded, but he knew all too well. He jumped out of bed quickly - so much so that as soon as he was on his feet, the world started swirling around him - the very moment his brain recognized the presence of an Opast aura near his mistress.<br>"Sodom!" Luka called.  
>The wolf was rapid in appearing at his side, letting him to catch hold of his fur not to fall on the ground; with his teeth, Sodom took a cloak the Light of God left on the bed and managed to put it on his master's shoulders to cover his upper body, naked except for his bandages.<br>Luka tightened the fabric around himself without thinking, too focused on the two figures that interested him now: his mistress and the demon, who was spying on her, unaware of the danger.  
>The mysterious Duras receded a bit, away from the barrier, and waited. Yuki's aura passed the Kekkai and got out in the open and unprotected area.<br>_No, stupid!_  
>Luka growled, even knowing neither she nor her hunter would hear him, and darted to the window, clinging to Sodom, who was instinctively obeying his master's jumbled thoughts. They broke the glass, not worried about alerting anyone, and, once on the ground, unharmed just thanks to Luka's magic, they set off at a run.<br>The Duras felt his body protesting, but he was used to ignoring it, so he continued running. He searched for Yuki with his mind as soon as he saw the entrance gate of the Main House, but he didn't make it in time to locate her because Yuki's scream reached him before that.  
>Roaring the loudest he could in a warning, he passed the Kekkai and dashed through the trees, homing on her voice. Sodom, behind him, howled.<br>They found Yuki a little farther ahead, in the middle of a wall-less cemetery, designed to the best of the constructors' abilities on the rocks, which surrounded the estate. Luka guessed it had to be the hallowed ground, which was meant for Zweilts' and Lights of God's bodies, buried, where nobody would have been able to notice the recurrence of the same names and faces.  
>God's Light had her back pressed against a tall cross and her feet dangling two spans from the ground; she was using her nails to convulsively scratch the wrist of the Duras, who was tightening his hand around her neck, and she was wriggling to break free from her assailant, but futilely.<br>Luka widened his eyes, and Cadenza gave him a satisfied smile.  
>In red-haired man's orbs there was a new layer of craziness, the one of a madman ready for revenge, and by his black eye Luka guessed Lucifer hadn't paid attention to who exactly he was beating, while venting his rage. Who knew why, the Zess didn't feel guilty at all at the idea of the redhead paying in his stead.<br>He leaned forward and growled, ready to attack, but Cadenza raised one index finger.  
>"Ah, ah, ah!" he stopped him, then pointed to the Light of God. The General's red blade appeared in his hand, changing the pointing gesture to a firm grip on the hilt and making the tip of the sword scratch Yuki's throat, drawing a blood drop, which rolled down her delicate neck.<br>Luka began seeing in red, and he was more than sure that wasn't his wounds' fault.  
>"Get. Immediately. Away. From. Her", he slowly articulated, but still his throat changed each word into an intimidating growl.<br>Cadenza continued smiling.

"You should be grateful he wanted you both alive…" he began; then he pretended to think for a second. "Oh, well, maybe not. Whatever he has in mind for you will be really terrible."  
>Luka crouched even lower, in a quite feral posture, and some purple energy shocks emanated from his eyes, making them glow threateningly.<br>Yuki managed to turn her head enough to see him and, to Zess' highest dismay, she smiled, relieved.  
><em>When this is over, you'll hear exactly what I think of your ideas!<em>, the Duras mentally promised. _Damned stupid, naïve and reckless girl!_  
>Cadenza stared at Yuki with dismay even greater than Luka's.<br>"Why do you laugh?!" he screamed to her face, shocked and maybe somewhat scared by her eerie tranquility. "Do you think he can beat me?! You're wrong! He's just a dog!"  
>The girl didn't say anything; however, when she turned her eyes to Cadenza again, he released his grip on her throat to free his hand and backhanded her as soon as her feet touched the ground.<br>Yuki, frail and thin as she was, fell crashing down to the ground on her side, moaning in pain, and Luka definitely lost control.  
>Taking advantage of the fact that Cadenza didn't have his hands on the hostage anymore, he lunged at him, knocking them both down and finishing rolling with him several steps away from Yuki.<br>Rocks, wooden crosses, which broke under their weights, and stones wounded them, making Luka's already rundown body protest, but he ignored the pain. Upon finding himself on the ground, lying on his side, he noticed Cadenza near his legs and tried to get him in the face with a kick, but the redhead managed to avoid it and to jump to his feet before him.  
>While Cadenza re-called his blade, Luka grabbed his Roxass earring. In the moment's fury, he ripped the jewel off without caring to open it, and the tearing of his ear conch sent a pang to his brain, which totally ignored it.<br>Luka took advantage of his kneeling position to attack first, from below, aiming for General Opast's stomach, but the other was fast enough to counter the blow.  
><em>No, it's not him, who's fast.<em>, Luka realized, continuing attacking incessantly and seeing his strikes always parried or avoided easily. _It's me, who's slow!_  
>He gritted his teeth and forced his body to its limit during the following minutes, but the wounds and lingering weakness after that week of fasting in Infernus echoed in his mind, and he couldn't improve his abilities all that much. Cadenza had no problems in adapting to his new rhythm and tempo.<br>Luka disengaged his sword and jumped backwards, distancing himself from the redhead man and landing on his tiptoes on a rock. A moment later, he discovered that the various blows, avoided by him and by his enemy, had opened furrows in the ground, lifted whole layers of terrene and made the cemetery look like a reversed image of a broken web. Yuki was clinging to the cross, and a rift ran only two inches away from her feet, but luckily Sodom had got to her, and, even if on the other side of the gap, he stayed in front of her as a shield in case that the two fighters came too close.  
>Luka was panting, while Cadenza was clearly still in his full strength, so much so that he started playing with his sword, making it rotate with an able wrist game.<br>The Zess had no idea about how long he had been fighting, but all around him a desert of rubble, rocks and crooked or broken crosses had been created. The dust of the stones, crumbled during the fight, now that the two were motionless, was setting down lightly on the absolutely terrible shambles, colouring everything in some hue between black and strange bluish. The cemetery looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries, though just a little while before it appeared perfect.  
><em>This is going too far.<em>, Luka reasoned. He couldn't win, if he was unable even to take notice of his surroundings; it meant that simply to hold that struggled parity he was concentrating on Cadenza only. He already risked to hurt Sodom or Yuki inadvertently, and the General was not even committing at his best.  
>The Zess was still looking for a way to force the redhead man to retreat or to drive him away from the path, which would have allowed the two he had been protecting to reach the Kekkai of the Main House, when the other Duras disappeared into nothingness. Luka stiffened, and a second later an atrocious pain seized him at his right kidney.<br>"In the end, I have got you…" Cadenza chanted into his ear, wrapping his free arm around his neck to keep him still, and then with a laugh he thrust his blade even deeper into the black-haired man, making the bloodied tip protrude from his stomach.  
>Luka growled in pain, as the sword pierced him bit by bit, and instinctively clawed the General's forearm, but that man didn't let him go, not even when his nails elongated, cutting the redhead's flesh, bones and tendons like butter. Nay, he tightened his grip.<br>"Be a good boy.", Cadenza laughed in his ear, "Lucifer said he wanted you alive; don't make me disobey him."  
>"However, he could beat you all the same, couldn't he?" Luka hissed.<br>Unwillingly, he let Roxass fall on the ground to have both his hands free, and with his right one he managed to snatch the hair on Cadenza's nape. Thus holding the General still, he hit him to the nose with the back of his own head, and the other man stepped back, cursing and putting a hand to his bloodied face.  
>Luka tried to move forward, but all he obtained from his body was an uncertain staggering and, before he could reach for his sword, Cadenza jumped on him, grabbed his own blade again and yanked it out from the gash.<br>Luka's back arched backwards, while a roar of pain escaped his lips a moment before his body definitely lost any remnants of energy and fell down exhausted.  
>The world suddenly stepped back.<br>Sounds became muffled, confused, and everything around him seemed to move in slow motion. Cadenza's feet entered his sight with an exasperating slowness, and in the same way the redhead's boot connected with his stomach. Luka's body trembled a little because of the hard kick, but a flickering of sorts was all the Zess sensed. The pain, even if it was there, didn't register in his brain, at that moment a victim of a strange fog. Luka knew he should get up, but no matter how many times he ordered his body to rise nothing moved.  
>Under him, a big red stain was spreading and reached even the fingers of the hand he had in front of his face. Could a person lose so much blood? Probably not, be he was a demon and bleeding wasn't a practicable option to ensure his death: many Duras, especially Zess, gave or were forced to give their own blood as nourishment to others, in exchange for something or as a proof of loyalty, ownership and that kind of things. Even if they were bereft of this liquid till its last drop, they only were affected by deep tiredness, which induced a kind of sleep or coma for several days, while their bodies replenished all the lost blood; but nothing more. Still, he couldn't allow himself to enter a coma at that moment.<br>Cadenza's black boots walked away from him, turned and headed toward Yuki.  
>The girl didn't even look at the General; nay, she was reaching out to him, and only Sodom's big form, pressed against her, was preventing her from getting to him. With a momentary delay, Luka realized Yuki was trying to reach not Cadenza, but himself.<br>_Damned stupid girl…_, he thought, but truly, her concern warmed something inside him.  
>Yuki was the only person, who had ever cared about him and who behaved like a friend; she was the little skinny girl, who helped him with Sodom, who smelled of lilies and whose kiss had a flavour of honey. But first and foremost, she was the person, who had saved him from Lucifer, even at a great risk to herself personally. She was the Mistress he had sworn to protect. And he always kept his real vows.<p>

With a growl of rage, he broke the mist, which had been wrapped around his senses, regaining lucidity, impaired by the blood loss, and pushed himself up, his palms firm against the ground; yet even calling upon all the strength he had, he barely forced himself on all fours. With the back of his hand he wiped away the blood from his mouth.  
>"We've not finished yet…" he growled, fixing his silvery eyes on General's ones.<br>Cadenza, a step away from Yuki, stared back at him in shock mixed with fear, but only for a moment. In a second, he was suddenly near Luka and began raining blows and punches on him in order to keep him down and prevent him from getting up.  
>The Zess used one arm to protect his stomach from the kicks, but he strove not to fall prone.<br>If he ended up on the ground at that moment, he knew it, he wouldn't be able to rise again.  
><em>Not in this way!<em>, he thought in a flash of pride. _Not like a dog!_  
>With a growl, he clenched the hand he kept on his chest in a fist, called all his strength and magic into his arm and with his elbow met Cadenza's shinbone.<br>The blow was strong for both the parties, and the two of them hissed in pain, but there was only one frightening snap.  
>Cadenza limped backwards, his hands flying instinctively to his hurt leg and grasping the thigh, but Luka hissed, when his arm fell inertly toward the ground, with its middle joint broken and so almost useless.<p>

_[__A te che io _

_ti ho visto piangere nella mia mano,_

_fragile che potevo ucciderti _

_stringendoti un po',_

_e poi ti ho visto _

_con la forza di un aeroplano _

_prendere in mano la tua vita _

_e trascinarla in salvo.__]_

Yuki put her hands to her mouth to smother a scream, when Luka recoiled to a side, shifting his weight, to escape the disadvantageous position he had been in, and she could see his arm dangle in an unnatural way, lifeless. The Zess clutched the hurt upper arm with his healthy hand and indulged in a grimace, but then he had to avoid an attack of Cadenza's. He managed to escape the blow by a whisker and even to gain his feet, but the General pressed on him again and again, and again, forcing Luka to move backwards with long jumps, unable to realize, in what direction he was going and getting farther away from Sodom and Yuki.  
>The girl jerked, when a blow just barely failed in shearing the Zess' leg.<br>"Sodom, get away!" she begged for the umpteenth time, trying to bypass the enormous black wolf, blocking her path to the two fighters.  
>The animal howled, but then, instead of pushing her backwards, he caught her gown with his teeth and started dragging her along in the opposite direction from where Cadenza was driving Luka to.<br>"Sodom, no!" Yuki began, but then she saw it.  
>The great sword lay on the ground idly, too far for Luka to reach it and too heavy for him, in his current state, to call it to himself with the magic.<br>Yuki cast a glance at Luka, able only to dodge his enemy's lunges, then she understood. She ran forward, and Sodom let her go; upon reaching the sword, abandoned on the rocks, she grasped the hilt. The weapon was really heavy, especially for her, who didn't have that much strength, and she needed a moment to raise it to a considerable level.  
>She turned to throw it to Luka, but the Zess had fallen down on his back not so far from her, and now Cadenza was removing his own sword from his adversary's thigh, ripping a growl of pain from him.<br>Yuki didn't think.  
>She had never really fought in her life, but she didn't pay much attention to it. She ran up to them, raised the sword with both her hands over her head and then landed the strongest blow she was able to lay on Cadenza's shoulders.<br>Apparently, she should have asked one of the Zweilts to teach her how to fence because the redhead man arched his back and screamed in pain, but in a moment he turned to her, his eyes full of fury.  
>Yuki tried to execute another strike, but the General got her in the stomach with such a violent punch that she fell to her knees, the sword slipping from her fingers, while she, instinctively, brought her hands to her hurt abdomen. Yuki gasped, shocked, and when she managed to open her eyes and to look upwards, Cadenza was going to return the blow, aiming at her head.<br>A moment before he did it, Luka managed to base himself on his still healthy leg and to jump on Cadenza's back, wrapping an arm around his throat. The redhead took two steps back before he managed to twist enough to give a hard nudge to Luka's solar plexus, where there still were the wounds, inflicted by Lucifer, and the black-haired man lost his grip, dropping face-up to the ground.  
>The Opast put his foot on the gash on the Zess' thigh, forcing him to bite his lip not to scream, while closing his eyes and arching his back.<br>Yuki still had her arms crossed on her stomach and wasn't able to move. She stared at Luka's expression of absolute agony, and suddenly her bleary sight overshadowed.  
>She felt it, the madness, pressing against the solid walls in her head, against the cage for her thoughts and shelter for her own essence. It was like a black cloud of chaos and disorder, where nothing had sense and she was even more lonely than in reality. A dark fog, where the only certain thing was the pain, sharp and fierce, terrible.<br>But she preferred to welcome that pain rather than leaving Luka in his.  
>She closed her eyes and looked for all the light she could find inside her scared heart and then directed it all into her hands, which she slowly removed from her body to raise them in front of her, palms perpendicular to the ground. She linked the tips of her index fingers and her thumbs, creating a triangle, then she pressed the other fingers to her palms.<br>In the centre of that figure she concentrated all the magic she could muster, and then she sent her thought to Luka.  
>If only he was hale, in his full strength, he would have had no problem eliminating Cadenza.<br>She focused only on that, she didn't even pause for a moment to consider that the Zess, as a Duras, could get hurt by her magic.  
><em>Luka's not a demon<em>., a voice in her head told her, _He's simply a born-in-the-wrong-place angel._  
>And then she directed all her magic, her sanity and her vital force to her silvery eyed Zess.<br>_I love you, Luka. Thank you for not leaving me alone; thank you for giving to me a bond, which is worth fighting for. Thank you, and, I beg you, forgive me, for I won't do the same for you._

_[__A te che mi hai insegnato i sogni _

_e l'arte dell'avventura._

_A te che credi nel coraggio _

_e anche nella paura._

_A te che sei la miglior cosa _

_che mi sia successa._

_A te che cambi tutti i giorni _

_e resti sempre la stessa.__]_

Luka didn't remember much, really: he had only fragmented flashes of memory on what had happened.  
>The moment before he was a prisoner of the blackness, engulfing his vision, and of the atrocious pain, which was flowing to him from every inch of his body; but a moment later, there was a strange white light all around him, even if he had his eyes still closed, and a sort of a fresh breeze was cleaning all his wounds away.<br>When he opened his eyes again, Yuki was immersed in a soft luminescence, which made her hair and dress sway slightly. She raised her eyelids for a moment, looked at him and smiled, but with an endless sadness. Then she rolled her eyes, fell on her back and shouted, and from that time everything was confused in the Zess' mind. He remembered her body arching, a prey of cramps he couldn't stop and her voice screaming in a pain, unknown to him; he remembered a growl of his own, and then Cadenza's terrified expression, and Roxass near the General's jugular vein, the red-haired man's uniform, soaked in blood, before he vanished, and, in the end, trees and trees and trees.  
>Luka wasn't sure how he'd been healed or what had happened to Cadenza, but he was acutely aware of the slight weight in his arms and of the landscape, which seemed to open to let him pass to the Kekkai. When he glimpsed the barrier, Luka remembered that Yuki was suffering some strange fit, that she was wriggling in his arms with her skin sweaty and her face hot and distorted in pain; and he remembered that without her he wouldn't be able to cross the border of the estate. If he did it, the spell would knock him out and make all the Zweilts come running to protect their princess.<br>When he reached the Kekkai, Luka didn't stop.  
>A pain stabbed him the moment his foot was over the barrier edge, sharp as a nail right to the centre of his skull; then his mind turned off, and he was lost in darkness.<p>

_[__A te che sei,_

_semplicemente sei._

_Sostanza dei giorni miei,_

_sostanza dei sogni miei._

_A te che sei,_

_essenzialmente sei,_

_sostanza dei sogni miei,_

_sostanza dei giorni miei.__]_

_"It's painful…"  
>Luka sighed, hearing that voice. It was hesitant, low and chocking, trembling and as if disjointed because it was breaking in the middle of the word, but he recognized it.<br>_Yuki?!_  
>He tried to look around, but realized that he didn't know very well, where he was, and that he couldn't really find his body.<br>"It hurts…"  
>Luka continued looking around, shocked, but he saw only darkness and nothing more. He was not even able to understand, where Yuki's voice came from: it seemed so near and yet so…everywhere… and that was driving him mad because she was suffering so much that every fiber of his was screaming to him to get to her.<br>"Hey, I beg of you…"  
>The Zess felt powerless, like never before. He wanted to move, to reach her or even just to shout to her not to be stupid and to wait, for he would come, sooner or later, but he could do nothing, but stay still, bodiless, and hear her suffer.<br>Something changed. Yuki's voice lost its echo, as if from nothingness it had passed into the world of flesh, and suddenly Luka felt her really close, not even as if she had been in front of him, but as if she had been talking exactly in his ears.  
>"…when it's the end, please..." she murmured, her voice weak, but serious, full of unshed tears, "please…"<br>Luka instinctively knew he didn't want to hear, what he was about to have to listen to, but he had no hands to put on the ears he wasn't able to find.  
><em>No! No, no, no! Stupid Yuki, stop saying rubbish! Come here!_  
>He wished fervently to find his own body, and immediately, as if out from nothingness, he recognized his eyelids and found them closed.<br>When he opened them, around him there was only the destroyed cemetery of the Zweilts', which now extended for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, creating a picture of absolute desolation till the very horizon. Something warm and soft moved against his chest, in a protective cage he had unconsciously made with his arms and upper body.  
>He lowered his gaze, and there was Yuki, her face pressed against his bandages, her hands clenched in fists, clutching the fabric, and she didn't dare to look up at him. He was still wearing the black cloak Sodom had given to him, even if now it was all torn because of the fight with Cadenza, and Yuki wore her dress, but with a lot of pieces missing, as if she also had fought for hours against something. The bows in her hair had got unbound and now lay inertly on the ground, while her tresses gently fell on her shoulders and down her spine.<br>Yuki didn't show her face to him as she finished her request, "kill me…".  
>Luka widened his eyes, but when he opened his mouth to reply, she was faster.<br>"If it's my fate to go mad and die, then... I want to be freed by your hand", she murmured, helpless as a child.  
>Luka felt there was something wrong in what she had said, but truly, it all seemed so clear and simple to him that he didn't hesitate in answering.<br>"All right", he said because maybe it wasn't true, but there was a part of him, which was sure it was so, sure that truly something, in the end, would be all right. "I vow not to do anything that will cause you pain", he heard himself say, and perhaps, that was the truth that would make everything be alright. "But that's something that may not come to pass. I'll protect you."  
>Luka stared at the fading and reappearing desolated landscape, surrounding them, and felt that something bad was going to happen, that an invisible enemy was coming for them. For her.<br>He got up, gently removing her from him, and Roxass was immediately in his hand. He held her out to show the bloodied blade to Yuki as a proof of how true what he had told her was.  
>"Don't worry... I will not betray you."<em>

_Yuki, still kneeling on the ground, stared at him, but she didn't seem reassured by his words. Her big eyes widened and a film of tears covered them, making them more beautiful and bright, but even more painful for him to look at. The demon didn't understand why, but Yuki held out her hand, smeared with blood, toward him as if he had been leaving her, as if he had been abandoning her again in her loneliness and as if she had been terrified of the mere idea of losing him.  
>"Wa…wait!" she started calling, and Luka wished he could grasp her fingers and call her stupid for her foolish fear, reminding her that he wouldn't be able to leave, not even if he wanted to, that there were a Contract and that he were a skilled warrior, so she didn't have to worry; but he wasn't able to do it.<br>His voice had vanished again, and, although he was motionless, it was like something were pulling him away from her, propelling her away. He tried to move, to return to her, but he was paralyzed again. He widened his eyes seeing her becoming smaller and more blurred, as if getting farther away from him, while her voice again turned into that desperate echo he heard in the beginning.  
>"Luka!" she continued calling, reaching out to him. "LUKA!"<em>

Luka jerked and widened his eyes. He was gasping, and all around him there was a room he had never seen before.  
>He gave a small sigh, relieved, realizing it had been all just a dream; he sat up despite his head's protests, still sore because of… of what?... Oh, correct, of the crash against the Kekkai. Luka made a face, remembering his great idea, but then, massaging his own nape, he got up and looked around. The room was white, small enough, with a single bed, surrounded by bowls, full of herbs and plants and strange potions, included that aloe-rubbish, even Luka had had to suffer, and the light, which entered the windows on his right, was the sunset orange one.<br>But Yuki was nowhere to be seen.  
>Luka immediately got tense, troubled, but before he could say anything, the door in front of the bed opened and let a man come in. He was tall, with long hair of the same ashy bronze colour as Yuki's and cold narrow amber eyes – of the same shade as Yuki's. He had a self-confident deportment, despite entering a room, occupied by a deeply confused and worried for his Mistress Duras. And he was staring straight in his face. For some reason he couldn't decipher very well, Luka immediately got the feeling of not being able to stand him.<br>"You're already up, unbelievable", the man commented with a strange smile before heading toward the desk in the corner of the room and sitting down on the chair. "Yuki told me you heal quickly, but nevertheless, you're surprising me. Oh, and I'm Takashiro Giou."  
>Luka elaborated the introduction right away.<br>"You're Yuki's householder", he remarked, tense. Something was wrong. "Where is she?"  
>Takashiro didn't seem surprised at his question, but he sighed.<br>"You're in our healer's room, while Yuki is in her rooms", he said; then he stared again in Luka's face, "I thank you for bringing her here immediately: it won't be much, but we'll be able to at least make this all as painless as possible, till the very end."  
>Luka's brain refused to process that sentence, but his mouth couldn't stop.<br>"What the hell should this mean?" he growled.  
>This time Takashiro seemed to be really confused and needed some seconds before realization dawned.<br>_Yuki, what have you done to him?!_, he thought, when he comprehended.  
>"She didn't tell you, did she?" he murmured, shocked.<br>Luka raised an eyebrow. The annoyance he felt simply looking at the other man was growing. He didn't reply, uncertain about the topic of the conversation, but Takashiro seemed to take it as an answer because he got up. Who knew why, Luka was sure it wasn't a good sign.  
>"The Light of God…" Takashiro began to say, keeping his eyes fixed on Luka to measure his reactions. He didn't want to be the one giving the news to the Duras, but it was already too late for Yuki to do it personally, "…doesn't simply heal us." <em>Let's take the longer path: I don't think it will make anything easier, but it's better than nothing.<em> "When she heals someone, she takes all their pain, both physical and mental, with her."  
>Luka's eyes dangerously shone for a moment, when he understood his own involvement in Yuki's last relapse. Takashiro wasn't all that surprised upon hearing him ask, whether it had been her, who had healed him, but he was astonished at the Duras' rapidity in deducing things. It would be difficult to sugar the pill so as to convince him to stay with them even without Yuki.<br>"Eventually," he started again, keeping his eyes on Luka's ones and striving not to show anything with his face, "she reaches the maximum of her endurance. The problem is that she doesn't carry only her own pain, but also that of many other people; and so, one moment, she gets pushed beyond her limit. Do you know what happens in this case?"  
>Luka didn't know and stood impassive. Now he was more than sure he didn't want to know, but as usual, he found himself forced against his will.<br>Takashiro just blinked, his only sign of solidarity with the Duras, then he brought himself to say it.  
>"She lose her sanity, her rationality. She goes mad", he explained, then his eyes darkened a bit, "and dies."<br>Luka stood still. He didn't feel anything, not even in his chest, except for strong irritation.  
>"The Light of God is immortal", he hissed. "All the demons know it."<br>Takashiro stared at him for a long moment before shaking his head.  
>"The Light of God rarely attains the age of twenty-five; very often she doesn't come to twenty, and when demons' attacks are really frequent, she doesn't manage to see even her sixteenth birthday." His voice was cold and even, expressionless, despite the crude reality he was slamming into Luka's face. Twenty-five, twenty, fifteen… he couldn't even understand such little time spans, after four hundred years of life. "She is reborn", Takashiro went on, maybe noticing something change in his interlocutor's face. "Just like all the Zweilts, she's made to reincarnate; simply her deaths and births are kept secret so that our enemies wouldn't attack easily, when she's unable to help us."<br>Luka stared at Takashiro. Now he felt really justified in hating him.  
>"She was never ill.", he said, and Takashiro shook his head.<br>"She was at her limit, but who-knows-how the fellowship with you gave her some more time."  
>Limit. Luka began to hate that word.<br>"When she healed me in the cemetery, did she push herself over her limit?" he asked.  
>Takashiro, as always, waited a moment before nodding, as if to foresee his reaction, and Luka wished he could punch him in the face and keep punching him to death, but he was quite sure Yuki would have been upset.<br>She would be upset… but for how long still? How much time did she have yet to scold him, to force him to drink aloe, to justify every mischief Sodom did, to do… everything?  
>"It's late to do anything.", Takashiro admitted, when Luka's silvery eyes drilled into his own with an unprecedented fierceness. The demon hadn't moved an inch, he remained obstinately on his feet near the bed, his head high, but his eyes clearly had passed from being similar to mercury right to being true steel blades, ready to cut someone to pieces. "We're still waiting for her to reach her end; the reincarnation rite must be executed at her last breaths."<br>And it was at that moment that something broke inside Luka. Something important he hadn't realized he was feeling.

When Luka returned from his moment of introspection, Takashiro was pressed against the wall, and the Duras' hand was gripping his throat.  
>"I brought her here immediately.", the Zess growled. "Instantly, without losing a second. How could you not be able to heal her?!"<br>Takashiro didn't bother to defend himself, as if he already knew Luka wouldn't kill him, and that made the demon wish to crush his windpipe.  
>"There's no remedy for what is killing Yuki.", Giou retorted.<br>Luka roared, and the windowpanes trembled, while some bowls, balanced unsteadily on the edges of the furniture, fell down and smashed up on the floor. Takashiro didn't move a muscle and continued staring in the black-haired man's eye.  
>"Don't act as if I were taking you aback", he hissed coldly. "You spoke in your sleep."<br>Luka hesitated for a moment. Why did his dream know Yuki's destiny?!  
>"How can it be?!"<br>"Evidently, when she healed you, Yuki created a light mental bond with you. Or maybe it was your Contract. As it is, you must have sensed part of her thoughts in the moment she realized she was going to die.", the blond man commented.  
>Luka wanted to kill him so desperately he was barely refraining from doing it.<br>"Where?!" he repeated, without bothering to express the subject.  
>Takashiro waited a bit, as usual, but right then Luka didn't have patience for that and tightened the grip on his throat to emphasize it. In the end, Giou nodded.<br>"Follow me."

_[__A te che non ti piaci mai _

_e sei una meraviglia._

_Le forze della natura si concentrano in te _

_che sei una roccia, sei una pianta, sei un uragano._

_Sei l'orizzonte che mi accoglie quando mi allontano.__]_

In front of Yuki's room door there were the Zweilts, and Luka could tell, by their expression and by Takashiro's shoulders' stiffening, that Yuki hadn't been the only one not to have shared some minuscule, but fundamental news. Such as her being on the edge of death or her having a Contract with a Duras. Not that it mattered to him in the slightest, at the moment; actually, he went straight ahead, ignoring the fact that Takashiro had stopped, and reached for the door.  
>When he grasped the handle, someone grabbed him by the wrist, but he limited himself to doing what he had always done. He channeled the magic in the contact point, created an electric shock and got rid of the problem by sending the blond Zweilt – the Voice of God, if he remembered properly – against the corridor wall.<br>Behind him, Takashiro gave a short laugh.  
>"You should learn how to manage your social relationships.", he observed, but Luka didn't pay attention either to him or to the confusion his presence had created between the Punishers' Hands and simply got into the room.<br>It was all just as it was in the morning, and at the same time, it was all changed.  
>Sodom lay on the ground at the foot-board of the bed and desperately whimpered, unabatedly; the candid sheets were the same because there was still the green stain of aloe slime; but the substantial difference was that now the figure under the sheets was the weak and pale, helpless one of Yuki, not his own, wounded, but not broken.<br>Yuki's ashy bronze hair was largely under her back, her big eyes closed, and her fair skin taut over her cheekbones, as if shrunk, all of a sudden. The air smelled of closeness and of the sweat Yuki was drenched in, and Luka could see the stains of mud on her arms, spread widely and constantly moving, one moment clutching the sheets and the next one rising high in the air, as if trying to defend herself from some coming monster. She was pale, really too much so, and it seemed that she had lost a lot of weight in a handful of minutes, reduced to the skeleton of herself.  
>Luka had experienced various kinds of pain during his life, but none of them came even close to the one, which hurt him to the stomach, when his mind realized the picture before him, and for a long moment he stood there unmoving, the handle in his hand and his body on the threshold.<br>"He can get in?!" one of the Zweilts exclaimed, shocked, at his back, and the grudge in that voice shook Luka from his thoughts enough to make him come in and then close the door behind himself, leaving that confused turmoil outside.  
>But the silence of the room immediately proved to be even worse, broken only by Yuki's panting and moans. Luka approached her slowly, unsure about what his face showed. What expression was he wearing at that moment? A sad one? A confused one? Or a reassuring one, composed for her sake only? Probably, he had his usual one, inscrutable, but at the moment he felt so many things, swirling in his head, and his thoughts were screaming so loudly that he feared they could be read on his face.<br>Yuki had to have heard his steps, or perhaps, she had felt his presence, because she opened her eyes, with effort. When she focused on him from under her half-lifted eyelids, she smiled lightly, and the skin of her lips, dry and wizened, broke in a corer of her mouth, colouring it in red.  
><em>Stupid… Stupid, stupid, stupid… Stupid!<em>  
>Yuki seemed amazed for a moment, but then she smiled again.<br>"It's alright, Luka…" she murmured slowly, striving to raise an arm and holding her hand out toward him.  
>Luka hurried to take it between his own palms, but he nearly shivered feeling how cold it was. To his enormous surprise, Yuki tightened her grip and practically forced him to help her sit up.<br>_No, stupid… Stupid, stupid, stupid Yuki…  
><em>Luka erected the pillows and put them at the head-board of the bed to help his Mistress lie against them, but then, when he had done it and tried to let go of her hand, she tightened her grip on his fingers again.  
>"You'll be okay, Luka.", she told him in a low voice. "My soul won't be purified, and my memory will stay intact, so the Contract between us won't be cancelled, and you won't risk anything. I assure you, you'll be okay…"<br>Luka was surprised by those words. He had not even thought about the Contract or about what would happen. Sincerely, it was the last thing he cared about at that moment.  
><em>Stupid, that's not what matters. Stupid, stupid, stupid… Stupid Yuki, stupid…<em>  
>"Luka…" she murmured then, smiling sweetly at him, "you're speaking aloud…"<br>Luka tried to open his mouth to reply, but he discovered he effectively had his lips already parted - and stammered over the umpteenth 'stupid' he had been continuously repeating. He closed his mouth and bit his tongue until he tasted blood running down his throat.  
>"It's alright, Luka.", Yuki repeated, posing her cheek against the pillows to keep her head turned toward him.<br>She was all trembling, and convulsively, because of the effort, and Luka wondered how much energy she was spending just to stay seated, how many minutes left to her she was sacrificing only to reassure him. It was all so wrong.  
>"It's all right.", he repeated, simply because he had no words of his own to use.<br>Yuki closed her eyes and needed a lot of seconds to find the strength to open them again; seconds Luka spent taut as a violin string. When she stared again at him, he sighed in relief, and Yuki, in spite of herself, smiled.

"I love you, Luka.", she said, closing her eyes and presenting him with one of her bright and shining smiles, which alone were able to drive darkness away more efficiently than all the Zweilts put together.  
>And yet, feeling like a child, Luka had to ask.<br>"What is love?" he whispered in a low voice; then, finding his own question silly, he forced himself to specify, "Is that the true form of this agony? Is 'love' the name you give to this pain?"  
>Yuki widened her eyes for a moment, but then they become a little narrower as her lips curved up a bit, while on her face there was that sweet expression she made every time he told her something beautiful. Even if he wasn't sure he knew what was so nice about what he had said.<br>"You're right", Yuki admitted at that moment, tightening slightly the grip of her fingers on the Duras' hand, "there can be pain in loving someone…" And, as if to prove it, she started crying slowly, "I'm sorry, Luka. I wanted to tell you, but it all happened so suddenly, and then you were still recovering, and I thought that maybe it wasn't the case of…of…" she bit her lower lip. "I truly believed I had more time."  
>And, as if to highlight that sentence, the door opened, letting in Takashiro, silent and deadly serious. In his hands the Giou's householder had the Solomon's Key, and that object alone was enough to understand what he was there for. The man approached the bed, sat down on the other side in relation to the demon and then put his hand on Yuki's forehead and began murmuring a strange litany, as if in the room there were nobody else and that one under his palm were nothing more than a doll.<br>"Here we are…" Yuki murmured, sighing.  
>Luka swallowed, but said nothing. He drew nearer to the bedhead and leaned forward, then he put his lips to her ear and whispered a word to her. When he backed off, she looked at him, confused.<br>"This is my true name.", he explained, shrugging his shoulders. Yuki said nothing, but Luka was sure she understood how much that only word meant, how much power over him he was giving her.  
>"I'll be here, when you wake up.", he whispered to her, and they both knew that sentence had a deeper meaning than it seemed, "I'll never betray you."<br>Yuki smiled again and nodded, really slowly.  
>"Be a good boy with the others", she recommended in a low voice, "and stay out of trouble."<br>A sad smile overtook even the lips of Luka's, who felt his eyes burn in a strange way for the first time in his life and who bended down to kiss her cheek, the only spot on her face he could reach because of Takashiro's hand.  
>The he withdrew a little, tightened his grip on her hand, which was growing colder, and kept still, looking at her, indifferent to Takashiro's presence or to whatever else.<br>In his mind there was room for only one thought: _I beg you, stupid, don't leave like this_.

_[__A te che sei l'unica amica _

_che io posso avere,_

_l'unico amore che vorrei _

_se io non ti avessi con me._

_A te che hai reso la mia vita bella da morire, _

_che riesci a render la fatica un immenso piacere.__]_

And it was like a dream at daybreak: all of a sudden, all ended.

_[__A te che sei il mio grande amore ed il mio amore grande._

_A te che hai preso la mia vita e ne hai fatto molto di più._

_A te che hai dato senso al tempo senza misurarlo._

_A te che sei il mio amore grande ed il mio grande amore._

_A te che sei, semplicemente sei. _

_Sostanza dei giorni miei, _

_sostanza dei sogni miei.__]_

Luka lost his consciousness of the world. He locked up in himself, in his arms, abandoned along his sides, and in the feeling of the icy fingers, slipping out of the inert grip of his own, and in his back, stiffened in pain, and in his face, frozen in a mask of nothingness.  
><em>Yuki…<em>  
>He didn't say it aloud because it wouldn't have mattered. Yuki was no more there.<br>Luka tried to think about it, to really think about it, but he found himself unable to do it. He had been sharing his life with Death for centuries; a thousand of times he had wished in vain for her to come for him, and as many times he had carried her to her quarry in his arms; and in serving her he had found his only true skill; but now that the betrayer had come to the only person he had ever loved, the only thing he wished to do was to turn her to pieces and to force her to go and stay away.  
>"It will be always like this."<br>Luka turned his gaze to that man, Takashiro, and stared at him silently, while the other, clearly tired because of the reincarnation rite, raised to his feet.  
>"Every time", he continued seriously, "it will be the same. Pain, pain, pain, pain, madness, death. This is the life, which awaits the Light of God. Can you understand it?"<br>Luka didn't answer. No, he didn't understand. He didn't understand, why such a person as Yuki should pass through such a pain; he didn't understand, why she should do it for people she barely knew and for the world she would never be able to live long enough to see. Yuki said it was her duty, and he, maybe, could understand that; but that didn't mean he liked it.  
>"Will you be able to stand it?" Takashiro insisted, even more serious. "Or perhaps, in a couple of lives you will betray us and leave, stabbing us in the back?"<br>Luka straightened, all the more sure that killing Takashiro would have made him feel better, at least a tiny little bit.  
>"Betray <em>you<em>?!" he hissed, looking at Giou with a cold and slightly disgusted expression. "I owe nothing to you, to anybody of you. You don't trust me, and I haven't sworn anything to you, so even if I killed you, here and now, I would betray nobody and would feel absolutely no regrets." He shifted his gaze to Yuki's exhausted and cold body and had to repress his trembling. "There's only one person I belong to, body and soul, and her I will never betray."  
>Takashiro smiled at that threat.<br>"As you wish,…?"  
>"Zess", Luka growled, staring at him with aversion. That man didn't deserve a syllable of his name; he preferred to be called by his race name rather than to give something so significant to him.<br>"I'm counting on it, _Zess_.", Takashiro simply said, before turning and stepping outside, shutting the door behind him and leaving Luka and Sodom alone.  
>The demon let himself drop to his knees near the bed and rested his forehead against the mattress.<br>_Never._, he thought, closing his eyes. _Your soul, Yuki, is what I have chosen. When you come back, whenever you do it and whatever your look, your nature or your smell are, you'll find me by your side. And this time, I'll protect you, I'll be able to defend you. I'll never betray you._ A single tear, as lonely as him and, in the light, as silvery as his irises, fell from his face to the floor. _Never. I'll never betray you.  
>I will never betray you.<em>

_[__E a te che sei, semplicemente sei. _

_Compagna dei giorni miei,_

_sostanza dei sogni miei.__]_

**_THE END_**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter song: "A te", by Jovanotti.<em>

_Here's the translation, if you want:_

_[To you who are the one in the world,/ the only reason to reach the very end/ of each one of my breaths__:/ when I look at you/after a day full of words,/ with you saying nothing/ it all comes clear__.] _

_[To you who found me/ in a corner with my fists clenched__,/ with my schoulders against a wall__,/ ready to defend myself./ My eyes lowered,/ I was in the queue/ with disillusioned men:/ you picked me like a cat/ and brought me with you.__] _

_[To you I sing a song/ because I have nothing else./ Nothing I can offer you better/ than everything I have./ Take my time/ and the magic/ which with a single jump/ makes us flying in the air/ as little bubbles.] _

_[To you who are,/ simply are./ Susbstance of my days,/ substance of my days./ To you who are my big love/ and my love big./ To you who took my life/ and made of it a lot more./ To you who gave sense to time/ without measuring it./ To you who are my big love/ and my love big.] _

_[To you who I/ saw crying in my hand,/ so frail I could have killed you/ tightening you a bit,/ and then I saw you/ with the strenght of an airplane/ taking your life in your hand/ and dragging it in safe.] _

_[To you who taught me dreams/ and the art of adventure./ To you who believes in courage/ and even in fear./ To you who are the best thing/ ever happened to me./ To you who changes every day/ and remains the same.]_

_[To you who are,/ simply are./ Substance of my days,/ substance of my dreams./ T_o you who are,/ simply are./ Substance of my dreams,/ substance of my days._]_

_[To you who never likes youself,/ and you're a wonder./ Nature forces are concentrated in you/ who are a rock, are a plant, are an hurricane./ You're the horizon which welcomes me when I leave.]_

_[To you who are the only friend/ I can have,/ the only love I would wish/ if I hadn't you with me./ To you who made my life beauty to die for,/ who manages to made the effort an endless pleasure.]_

_[To you who are my big love and my love big./ To you who took my life and made of it a lot more./ To you who gave sense to time without measuring it./ To you who are my big love and my love big./ To you who are, simply are./ Substance of my days,/ substance of my dreams.]_

_[And to you who are, simply are./ Helpmate of my days,/ substance of my dreams.__]_

* * *

><p><strong><em>Hi!<em>**_  
><em>_The end, I imagine I already told I hate this word. -.-__  
><em>_I know, it's not the best ending Luka could have ever wished for, but this is the destiny he chose loving Yuki and it wouldn't have been fair ending the story with their happy ever ever after and pretending that could really last forever._

_Speaking about the chapter itself (which, I know, it's really long) there are some notes I'd like to do, if you don't mind:__  
><em>_- at the beginning Yuki didn't heal Luka using her Light of God, simply because theory says that power could kill the Duras and this is not what we want, right?;) ;__  
><em>_- Sodom increased his speaking skills, I admit it, but he's still at the beginning so, even if using the first person, he continued thinking to himself in third person, be patient with the puppy :) ;__  
><em>_- Yuki's monologue, since "Being locked is not a big deal." to "It's scary, so scary, and so sad..." it's totally taken by the manga, in one of the scenes of Luka's memories;__  
><em>_- Satan's story and hypotetical powers limitation is an invention of mine, but not the bones mask. You all surely remeber the illusion Elegy created for Luka, the man with the face covered by a bones mask: there, my personal idea is that he was Luka's previous master, more because our hero thought to him as 'something happened in Infernus': obviously it's simply my idea and there are no prooves, so be pityful and let me daydreaming;__  
><em>_- Luze's beating and vengeance against Luka it's another invention of mine, nothing related to it in the manga, but I wanted to justify in some way Luze's rage for his brother and his continuous reproaching him the Crosszeria's conditions of life worsening because of his betrayal;__  
><em>_- again, the fight against Cadenza is totally mine, but I hate too much that Duras for not leaving Luka beat him even just a bit, but I paid attention to create the landscape of the beginning of the manga, so the rocks devastated cemetery and Luka dressed in a black cloak ready to fight;__  
><em>_- Luka's dream is the whole recovery of the beginning of the manga, Yuki's dream :), I wanted to make this parallelism making Luka dream the same scene simply...as a cameo appearance, there;__  
><em>_- totally mine the first meeting with Takashiro, I wanted to justify the hatred Luka will feel for Takashiro for all the time and I thought that making him be the one giving him the news Yuki was going to die was the best way to make him...unpleasant to Luka XD;__  
><em>_- Yuki-Luka's dialogue, since "I love you" (that's not a surprise, I know) to "there can be pain in loving someone..." is again one of Luka's memories in the manga (even if I admit that in the drawns Yuki seemed to be a little more...alive);__  
><em>_- the reincarnation rite is not wrote, I know, but it's because I have no idea about how it could be XD, but I put the fact that Luka gave Yuki his real name because in the manga he said to boy-Yuki he had done it as his servant;__  
><em>_- "Zess", who would have ever said that only a word could give me so many problems! Why did I make Luka think to Zess as his 'race'? Long explaination, so listen carefully: Luka is a Crosszeria, that's a point, and "Crosszeria" is a Clan, not a race; the problem is that Luka told that Crosszerias are so hated in Infernus that they ara not allowed to consider themselves as members of the Duras ("the ones who are proud") race and are instead called Zess ("sinners") as if they were part of another race. This is all to explain you why Luka introduces himself as Zess (the same as if I introduce myself with a "Nice to meet you, I'm Human" -.-) and he thinks to this as his "race" name. Probably it didn't interest you, but I told you it the same XD__  
><em>_And this is the notes end, too -.-_

_I don't know what to say. _

**I want to thank again my beta, Linda-Nairika, for her hard work, for being so patient and long-suffering with me and my awful English and for having loved this story as much as -if not more than- me. I'm really really really thankful, I don't know what I would have done without you. :)**

_Thanks even to the girl this story is dedicated to, and to everybody who reviews, follows or favourites this story. Thanks to you all, guys :)_

_What else? Thanks for being able to arrive here (I know it was't easy -.-)__  
><em>_Read you soon,__  
><em>_bye bye!_

**_Agapanto Blu_**


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